Microform Collection

Title: Tom Roberts papers
Call Number: MICROFILM 5999

Subject:

Painters--Australia--Correspondence

Notes: Thomas William Roberts (1856-1931) was born in Dorchester, England, in 1856 - coincidentally the first year of responsible government in Victoria and the year that Parliament of Victoria's Legislative Chambers were built. He emigrated to Australia in 1869 with his recently widowed mother and his brother and sister. In Melbourne, he studied art while earning a living working for photographers. He left Melbourne in 1881 to attend the Royal Academy Schools in London. Between 1881 and 1885 he studied both in London and while on a study tour of Europe. Roberts is best known today for his large, late nineteenth-century paintings such as Shearing the rams, The Golden Fleece, A break away! and Bailed up, which evoke feelings of Australia's emerging sense of identity and national culture. The papers mainly include his letters written to Sir Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder, and Frederick McCubbin. This small microform project brings together an important cluster of surviving papers relating to the O'Ryan Mission to Japan and Occupied China in 1940. They include a diary, draft reports, and notes on interviews with Japanese businessmen and government officials. A private initiative organized by business interests on both sides of the Pacific, the mission sampled a wide spectrum of Japanese opinion at a critical juncture in American-Japanese relations. This collection is located in the microforms area on the 2nd floor of the library.

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