The Pioneer (painting)
| The Pioneer | |
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| Artist | Frederick McCubbin |
| Year | 1904 |
| Medium | oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 225.0 cm × 295.7 cm (88.6 in × 116.4 in) |
| Location | National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne |
The Pioneer is a 1904 painting by Australian artist Frederick McCubbin. The painting is a triptych; the three panels tell a story of a free selector and his family making a life in the Australian bush. It is widely considered one of the masterpieces of Australian art.
The painting is part of the National Gallery of Victoria's Australian art collection and exhibited in the Ian Potter Centre in Federation Square in Melbourne.
The three panels of the triptych tell a story of a free selector, a farmer who has chosen some land to clear and farm, and his family. The story is ambiguous, like many of McCubbin's other works and McCubbin chose not to respond when controversy broke out over the "correct" meaning.
The left panel shows the selector and his wife settling on their selection; in the foreground the woman is deep in thought. In the centre panel, the baby in the woman's arms indicates that some time has elapsed. A cottage, the family home, can be seen in a clearing through the trees. The right panel shows a young man standing over a grave. A city is visible in the background, again indicating that time has passed. It is unclear if the young man is the baby from the centre panel or a stranger stumbling across the grave.
McCubbin painted the work en plein air near Fontainebleau — his home in Mount Macedon, northwest of Melbourne — using specially dug trenches to lower the canvas. The view is across a neighbouring property owned by William Peter McGregor, the second chairman of Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd. The cottage in the middle panel was the home of the manager of McGregor's bull stud. McCubbin's wife Annie and a local Patrick "Paddy" Watson were the models for the left panel, with Watson also the model for the youth in the right panel. The model for the centre panel was a young commercial painter, James Edward with Annie again posing as the woman. The baby was Jimmy Watson, Patrick's nephew.
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