Arthur Streeton (1867–1943), painter, grew up in Geelong and Melbourne and attended night classes at the National Gallery School between 1882 and 1887. In 1886 he met Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts, who admired his paintings and invited him to join one of the painting camps on the outskirts of Melbourne. With Roberts, McCubbin and Charles Conder, Streeton was a core member of the group of artists known as the 'Heidelberg School'. In 1897, after several years in Sydney, moved to London with the photographer Walter Barnett and his wife. Streeton spent most of the next 25 years in Europe, working for some time as an official Australian war artist in France, and serving alongside Roberts and other expatriate Australians in the Royal Army Medical Corps at the 3rd London General Hospital at Wandsworth. He married the Canadian violinist Nora Clench (1867–1938) in 1908. Barnett later photographed the couple at their St John's Wood home in England. Some years after the end of the war, in 1923, the Streetons returned to Australia, settling near Melbourne.
Purchased 2001
H. Walter Barnett (age 47 in 1909)
Arthur Streeton (age 42 in 1909)
Nora Streeton (age 42 in 1909)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Sarah Engledow is seduced by the portraits and the connections between the artists and their subjects in the exhibition Impressions: Painting light and life.
Impressions: Painting light and life presents portraits by, and of, artists at the heart of Australian impressionism including Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin.
