Frederick McCUBBIN
Australian 1855–1917
The son of a baker, Frederick McCubbin was born in West Melbourne and grew up in the urban streets of Melbourne. In 1871 he was apprenticed for five years as a coach painter and commenced studies at the National Gallery School, where he remained a student for fifteen years. In 1885, with Tom Roberts and Louis Abrahams, McCubbin established the first artists’ camp at Box Hill, where he produced Lost, 1886 (in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria), his earliest and certainly one of his most indelible narratives of Australian bush life.
During the summer of 1886–87 McCubbin and Roberts met the nineteen-year-old Arthur Streeton painting at the seaside town of Mentone. They began working together and formed a close-knit group that changed the course of painting in Australia. Their passion for painting en plein air, directly from nature, recording the vagaries of weather conditions, and searching for particularly Australian subjects, challenged many preconceived notions of art practice in Australia during the late nineteenth century.
Affectionately called ‘The Prof’ for his interest in literature and his willingness to recite memorised passages, McCubbin frequently used members of his family as models for his major figurative compositions. Mary, 1891, is one of the artist’s major portraits of the period and depicts Mary Jane Moriarty, the sister of McCubbin’s wife, Annie Lucy Moriarty, who he married on 5 March 1889 at St Ignatius Church, Richmond, with Tom Roberts as best man. Carefully modelled with a monochromatic palette, Mary was shown in the Exhibition of Works of Victorian Artists at the National Gallery of Victoria in November 1891, and again in May 1892 at the Victorian Artists’ Society, where it was admired by contemporary critics for its simplicity and restraint:
The head entitled ‘Mary’ (142), by Mr. McCubbin, is very happy in its quiet, simple style, altogether free from trickery. The impress of individuality is distinct, but unforced, so that it lingers in the memory like a face we know well.1
In 1895 McCubbin moved with his young family from Blackburn to Brighton and during the next five years concentrated on primarily large-scale narrative paintings that examined atmospheric and poetic aspects of the landscape. Many of the images record the rambling orchard setting of the artist’s backyard, in which he often played host to visiting friends and artists:
I walked over to Prof McCubbin’s yesterday and had tea with him in his garden. Mrs Prof in a harmonious yellow gown; all the little Profs buzzing round the garden of fruit trees and the haystack. The Prof is a married man, very happily and securely married.2
1 The Building and Engineering Journal, Melbourne, 18 June 1892, p. 250.
2 Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts, 18 December 1896, in Croll, 1946, p. 62.
Geoffrey Smith
Autumn memories, 1899, is one of McCubbin’s most lyrical and romantic images of the 1890s and forms a companion to A winter evening, 1897, purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1900. Both paintings are reflective essays on the subtleties of light and colour found in the early Melbourne evening; however, Autumn memories continues McCubbin’s fascination for placing female figures in the open landscape, a popular Victorian theme that preoccupied him throughout his career. Shown seated on a fallen log in quasi-medieval dress, pensively clasping her knee and looking into the distance, Annie McCubbin transcends her domestic environment and becomes a poetic motif for the transience of nature as the warm, afternoon autumnal light dissipates and fades, becoming, as the title suggests, an evocative memory.
Included in McCubbin’s solo exhibition, held in his studio at the NGV in November 1899, the painting received favourable reviews:
‘Memories’ is a characteristic example of Mr. McCubbin’s artistic leaning. The figure of a woman dressed in a harmony of green and old gold sits on an old log looking out to a far autumn-tinted distance. The whole pose is wistful and suggestive.1
1 Argus, Melbourne, 23 November 1899, p. 3.
Geoffrey Smith