El pionero

McCubbin painted this large triptych in 1904, only three years after the Australian colonies joined into one federated nation, and the mood of that new nationalism runs right through it. He borrowed a form usually kept for church altarpieces, three joined panels, and used it to tell an ordinary settler story. On the left a young couple arrives in the bush and lights a fire. In the centre, years on, they have a child, cleared land and a small house. On the right a man stands over a bush grave while the towers of a growing city rise in the far distance. McCubbin never explained who lies in that grave, and when arguments broke out over what it all meant, he simply refused to settle them.