Frederick McCubbin

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The Letter 1884

Frederick McCubbin (25 February 1855 - 20 December 1917) was an Australian painter who was prominent in the famous Heidelberg School, one of the most important periods in Australia's visual arts history.

Born in Melbourne, the third of eight children of a baker, McCubbin worked for a time as solicitor's clerk, a coach painter, and in his family's bakery business while studying art at the National Gallery of Victoria's School of Design, where he met Tom Roberts and studied under Eugene von Guerard. He also studied at the Victorian Academy of the Arts, and in 1876 and from 1879 to 1882 exhibited there, selling his first painting in 1880. In this period, with the death of his father he became responsible for running the family business.

By the early 1880s, his work began to attract considerable attention and won a number of prizes from the National Gallery, including a 30-pound first prize in 1883 in their annual student exhibition, and by the mid-1880s began to concentrate more on the works of the Australian bush that made him most famous.

In 1883, he received first prize in the first annual Gallary students' exhibition, for best studies in colour and drawing.

In 1888, he became instructor and master of the School of Design at the National Gallery. In this position he taught a number of students who themselves became prominent Australian artists, including Charles Conder and Arthur Streeton.

He continued to paint through the first two decades of the 20th century, though by the beginning of World War I his health began to fail. He travelled to England in 1907 and visited Tasmania, but aside from these relatively short excursions lived most of his life in Melbourne.

McCubbin married Annie Moriarty in March, 1889. They had seven children, of whom their son Louis also became an artist.

In 1901 McCubbin and his family moved to Mount Macedon, where he was inspired by the surrounding bush and has experimented with the light and its effects on colour in nature.

In 1912, he became the founding member of the Australian Arts Society.

McCubbin died in 1917 from a heart attack after suffering pneumonia.

[edit] Works

Pioneer 1904

McCubbin painted a broad range of scenes, from portraits to coastal scenes, which are all well-regarded in the history of Australian art. It is, however, his narrative paintings of bush life for which he is best remembered, most notably The Pioneer, which is his best-known work. In this iconic triptych (set of three paintings), produced in 1906, McCubbin tells a story of the "selectors" who settled much of Australia's farmland in the latter years of the 19th century. This triptych is a great masterpiece in Australian painting, capturing the mood of the Heidelberg school even if it was painted many years later.

His painting of Down on his luck shows a sombre mood of a man with his head resting against his arm, looking melancholy while stroking a fire with a stick, against an Australian landscape. The emotion of the figure is very strong, a powerful feeling of sadness throughout the picture. It is also a very typical Australian image, the dry bushland with its gum trees, and the man with workmen's trousers, boots, hat and a bushy beard. He showed that he admired the Australian bush, for the sadness of the man contrasts with the bright bushland which takes up most of the picture. He showed an understanding of what the Australian bush looks like as well as painting it in his own unique style.

A central figure in the Heidelberg school, McCubbin's later works reveal the influence of his trip to England and the influence of J.M.W. Turner.

Frederick McCubbin also painted A Bush Burial, a moving portrait of simple bush folk burying a loved one. It was painted in 1890, at a time when the colony was experiencing its worst drought and depression in the history of the colony.

["McCubbin creates an engulfing, claustrophobic landscape by barely suggesting any horizon and compressing midground and background. In contrast, the bush folk are portrayed as heroic figures."][1]

In 1998 Frederick McCubbin's painting Bush Idyll (1893) was sold for $2,312,500. This was a record price for any Australian painter.