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In 1885 Tom Roberts was himself a passenger heading south, sailing home to Melbourne after four years studying art in England. On the deck of the steamship Lusitania he sketched the people around him, wrapped against the cold as the ship carried them toward a new life on the far side of the world. Back in his studio he worked those sketches into this scene the following year. The passengers stand among the masts and rigging, some looking out at a sea they had crossed for weeks, and you can read the mood in the way they hold themselves, quiet and a little uncertain. It was the first time Roberts painted the subject of migration, which would become one of the recurring stories of Australian life.