UNKNOWN

Figures on a hillside, twilight, 1890s, was found in the studio of Tom Roberts after his death and was presumed by his biographer, R. H. Croll, to be by Roberts. More recently the sketch, which is unsigned, has been given to Arthur Streeton and dated to his Heidelberg period, 1888 to 1890, when he and his painting companions lived there and were joined at weekends by friends from Melbourne. William Moore has called this time ‘the golden age of landscape painting in Australia’.1

A drawing by Streeton, A country couple, in one of his sketchbooks (Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales), has been related to the sketch, and it has been compared with his Above us the great grave sky,1890, (in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia), which shows lovers on a hillside at twilight. Not all scholars, however, accept the Streeton attribution and the date of the sketch. There are technical questions, and the wom- an’s costume (she is walking away from her partner) could suggest it is from a later period.

Further research and scientific examination will, no doubt, eventually solve the puzzle of this interesting sketch, which does indeed concern itself with issues that exercised the minds of the Heidelberg School painters.

1 W. Moore, The Story of Australian Art, vol. 1, Sydney, 1934, p. 76.

Terence Lane