A Tosquia dos Carneiros

Tom Roberts painted this in the shearing shed at Brocklesby station in New South Wales, going back three springs running from 1888 to get the light and the sweat of the work right. Paint scraped from a board salvaged from that shed, tested a century later, matched the canvas exactly, so we know he worked much of it on the spot. Australia in 1890 was still a scatter of British colonies, 11 years short of becoming one country, and Roberts wanted a picture that felt native to it. He found his subject in wool, the trade the colonies ran on, and gave the ordinary sweating work of the shed the scale usually kept for history painting. The men bend to the rams in a warm timber haze while a boy hauls fleece across the floor.