Moody’s pub is one of Russell Drysdale’s most celebrated paintings and among the most frequently reproduced images of twentieth-century Australian art. Based on the Royal Hotel on the Hume Highway at Seymour, the painting evokes Drysdale’s particular sense of humour in its observation of events from everyday life. A group of laconic country men are shown standing with hands on hips or dangling at their sides. As one of Drysdale’s earliest paintings of a street in an outback town, and the first painting by the artist acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria, Moody’s pub rapidly achieved iconic status.