Tom Roberts Australian, 1856-1931

A gift to the present owner about thirty years ago

Private collection, United Kingdom

Tom Roberts was one of this country’s greatest portrait painters, depicting fellow Australians from all walks of life – from elegant young women, statesmen, actors and academics to Aboriginal tribesmen or the old street musician who played outside the Scots Hotel in Melbourne – with equal sympathy and technical skill. ‘Portraiture suited Roberts’s capabilities well. He could get lost in describing the formless, atmospheric landscape but never when faced with the definite, challenging subject of a face. For whatever reason, he was a different painter when tackling portraits. Almost invariably they evoked from him sure, subtle and sophisticated brushwork and an equally competent characterisation’.¹

His portrait of Sir Alexander Campbell Onslow, attorney general of Western Australia from 1880 and chief justice from 1882, was probably painted in Sydney to mark Onslow’s knighthood in 1895. During the mid 1890s Roberts had set himself a task of painting well known figures in Australian society and a number of these portraits were quite small and informal. He had also completed important portraits of several members of the judiciary; and of Sir Henry Parkes in 1892 and 1894.² His likeness of Onslow, a life-sketch for a more formal commission that seems never to have eventuated, is broadly painted, capturing the subject’s powerful personality with engaging vitality.

Onslow was born in England in 1842 and called to the Bar of the Inner Temple in 1868, but already had strong Australian connections before his arrival.³ His brother Arthur had been brought up in Sydney by their maternal grandfather, Alexander McLeay, and married Elizabeth Macarthur who later changed her name to Macarthur-Onslow. Living at Camden Park, Menangle, Arthur Onslow held the seat of Camden in the Legislative Assembly and was later a member of the Legislative Council. The younger Alexander’s initial years in Western Australia were fraught with conflict and controversy: he suffered sunstroke whilst playing cricket almost immediately after arriving in Albany in December 1880, with apparently lasting effects that included frequent irascibility. However he was regarded as competent and honorable and was recognised as a distinguished administrator in his later career.

Onslow could have been introduced to Roberts through either judicial or musical connections in Sydney. Onslow reputedly had a ‘magnificent bass voice’ and with his wife, Madeline Emma (née) Loftus, was active in the colony’s musical circles. Lady Onslow is said to have encouraged Percy Grainger as a young boy in Melbourne. Unfortunately ill health forced Onslow’s retirement in 1901, and he returned to England where he died on 20 October 1908. His portrait has remained in a private collection in England and was unknown to Dr Helen Topliss when she published her catalogue raisonné in 1985.

1. Eagle, M., The Oil Paintings of Tom Roberts in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997, p. 54.
2. See Topliss, H., Tom Roberts 1856-1931:  a catalogue raisonné, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985.
3. Braybrooke, E. K. in Dictionary of Biography, vol. 5, Melbourne University Press, 1974, pp. 367-369; our notes are much indebted to this biography.