Wintermorgen nach dem Regen, Gardiner's Creek

Tom Roberts painted this in 1885, the year he came home to Melbourne after four years in Europe, where he had trained in London and picked up on the fashion for painting outdoors, directly in front of the subject. He brought the idea back with him. That same year he began leading painting camps in the bush at Box Hill, on the city's edge, work now seen as the start of Australian Impressionism. Here he is on the outskirts of Melbourne after rain, a lone rider driving a few cattle across an old timber trestle bridge over Gardiners Creek. The ground is wet, the light thin and grey. Land like this, just beyond the last houses, was already being swallowed by the growing city.