She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism is a large-scale exhibition of more than 250 artworks drawn from major public and private collections around Australia, including the NGV Collection. Featuring some of the most widely recognisable and celebrated works by Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin, Jane Sutherland, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder, Clara Southern, John Russell and E. Phillips Fox, the exhibition also brings to light lesser-known paintings by Iso Rae, May Vale, Jane Price and Ina Gregory. She-Oak and Sunlight presents these works in new and surprising contexts, exploring the impact of personal relationships, international influences and the importance of place on the trajectory of the movement.
Tom Roberts, c. 1895 
Frederick McCubbin Self-portrait, 1886, Art Gallery of New South Wales 
Jane Sutherland, Stewart & Co., Melbourne, 1879–96 
Arthur Streeton, 1905 
Charles Conder, before 1909 
Clara Southern 
John Russell, c 1888 
E. Phillips Fox, circa 1890 
May Vale 
Portrait of Ina Gregory by E. Phillips Fox, 1895, National Portrait Gallery Collection
Highlights from the exhibition include Tom Roberts’s iconic Shearing the rams, 1890, which depicts sheep shearers plying their trade in a timber shearing shed, and Clara Southern’s An old bee farm, Warrandyte, c.1900, a nostalgic vision of the landscape, painted in a soft palette of twilight tones. Following a complex conservation treatment, visitors are also able to appreciate the newly vivid colours of the Hawkesbury River as depicted in Arthur Streeton’s The purple noon’s transparent might, 1896.
She-Oak and Sunlight charts the creative exchanges between the movement’s leading figures in Australia, by presenting artworks in thought provoking groups and pairings. The exhibition also considers the broader global context, personal relationships and artistic synergies of Australian Impressionists and those working internationally, by juxtaposing Australian artworks with more than 50 works from the groundbreaking ‘9 by 5 Impression Exhibition’ held in Melbourne in 1889, and named after the cigar box lids on which many of the works were painted.
In the winter of 1889, Roberts and his young friends, Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder, determined to present an exhibition of ‘Impressions’ in Melbourne at Buxton’s Rooms in Swanston Street, a prominent venue located opposite the Town Hall.
When developing this plan, the artists were clearly influenced by Whistler, whose London exhibitions were renowned for being conceived as ‘total works of art’. Whistler coordinated every aspect, from the harmonious décor and framing of the works, to the specially designed catalogues, and all these features were adopted in the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition.
At Buxton’s, these small works of art were strikingly displayed in wide timber frames, many of them stained, or embellished with metallic paint or decoration. The room itself was elegantly furnished in the Aesthetic style with silk draperies and Japanese accessories creating what one contemporary described as ‘a most harmonious arrangement of colour’.
Whistler’s flair for publicity was also copied – a series of articles and press interviews tantalised Melbourne’s public with promises that at last it would ‘have an opportunity of judging for itself what Impressionism truly is’. (Excerpted from Small Pictures, Big Legacy: The 9 x 5 Exhibition Then and now. Pursuit, 15 June 2017).
Works by Monet, Sisley and Whistler from the NGV’s collection are also on view, highlighting the influence of European artists of the late 19th century on their Australian contemporaries.
She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism is guest curated by Dr Anne Gray AM with the NGV Australian Art Department.
Press and References:
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/small-pictures-big-legacy-the-9-by-5-exhibition-then-and-now
SHE-OAK AND SUNLIGHT: AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSIONISM Exhibition Catalogue
Publisher: National Gallery of Victoria and
Thames & Hudson Australia
290 x 230 mm (portrait), 306 pages,
hardback bound in printed Wibalin
ISBN: 9781760761905
Category: Impressionist art, Australian art
RRP: $59.99
Publication date: April 2021
Australia’s Impressionists
Riopelle, Christopher; Bonyhady, Tim; Goudie, Allison; Taylor, Alex J.; Thomas, Sarah
Published by National Gallery London (2017)
Sunlight and Shadow: Australian Impressionist Painters, 1880-1900
Astbury, Leigh;Phipps, Jennifer
Published by Bay Books, Palo Alto, California, U.S.A.(1989)
Disappointingly Muddy 