Roberts | Shearing the Rams
Roberts | Shearing the Rams
Want to see this artwork on your wall? Click here to use our free interior design service — fast and 100% free!
♡ Add to Wish List
- 100% hand-painted oil on canvas
- Delivered Framed & Ready to Hang!
- We stretch (Gallery Wrap) every canvas
- Hanging wire is attached to the back
- 100% Money Back Guarantee · Australian Owned
- Any questions? Please call us on 1300 90 21 53
About Shearing the Rams by Tom Roberts
Tom Roberts painted Shearing the Rams across the summers of 1888 and 1889 in a woolshed at Brocklesby Station, near Corowa on the Murray, finishing it in his Melbourne studio in 1890. He went out there specifically to do it, boarded on the property, and worked from the shearers themselves.
He was explicit about why. Roberts wanted, in his words, to paint the great pastoral life and work of Australia — to give the country's own labour the scale and seriousness that European painting reserved for history and myth. Nobody had really done that here. He chose a shed full of men in singlets with hand blades and made a canvas nearly two metres wide out of it.
The timing was not accidental either. Blade shearing was about to be swept away by machines, and Roberts knew it. The small boy at the centre is the tar boy, whose job was to dab tar on any sheep the blades cut. Critics at the time were unsure what to make of a picture with no story in it. It now hangs in the National Gallery of Victoria and is one of the most recognised images in Australian art.
Shearing the Rams at a glance
- Artist: Tom Roberts (1856–1931)
- Painted: 1888–1890, Brocklesby Station, New South Wales
- Movement: Heidelberg School — Australian Impressionism
- Original: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
- Medium: Oil on canvas on composition board, 122.4 × 183.3 cm
Common questions about Shearing the Rams
Where is Shearing the Rams?
The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, which bought it in 1932. It is one of the works most people go to the NGV specifically to see.
Where was it painted?
In the woolshed at Brocklesby Station near Corowa, in southern New South Wales, over two shearing seasons. Roberts stayed on the property and worked from the shearers directly, then completed the canvas back in Melbourne.
Who is the boy in the middle?
The tar boy. When a shearer's blade nicked a sheep, it was the boy's job to dab tar on the cut as an antiseptic. It was the usual entry-level job in a shed and often the first paid work a boy did.
Why is it considered important?
Because it treated Australian working life as a subject worthy of a major painting, at a moment when serious art here still looked to Europe for its subjects. It is also a record of blade shearing in its last years before mechanical handpieces took over the industry.
What is the Heidelberg School?
A group of painters working around Melbourne in the late 1880s — Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin and Charles Conder chief among them — who painted outdoors and set out to capture the particular light and colour of the Australian landscape rather than applying European conventions to it. It is usually described as Australian Impressionism.
Own a hand-painted Shearing the Rams
This is not a print. Every painting we sell is reproduced in oils on canvas, by hand, by professional artists — no giclée, no computer-generated technique.
The whole picture is built inside a very narrow band of colour. A shearing shed is timber, wool, dust and skin — ochres, tans, dusty pinks and greys — and Roberts had to make an entire crowded scene legible using almost nothing else, separating one man from the next by the smallest shifts in warm tone. Narrow tonal ranges are exactly where reproduction struggles: compress them even slightly and the close values collapse into each other, so the shed turns muddy and the figures start to merge. Mixed and laid down by hand in oils, those small distinctions survive, and you can read the depth of the shed the way Roberts painted it.
- A range of sizes — choose yours above. The original is wide, and the composition needs that width to hold the length of the shed.
- Framed and ready to hang, gallery wrap, or rolled canvas if you would rather frame it yourself.
- 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions.
- Free delivery Australia-wide. Australian owned and operated, with a local contact you can actually reach.
Framing Options: You have 3 choices
Option 1. Choose an outer frame - see images below.
You only need to choose one and the painting will be sent to you framed and ready to hang.
* Below is an example of a customer who chose the Gold Ornate frame
Option 2: Choose a Gallery Wrap Stretched Painting.
If you want the frameless modern gallery wrap look then you only need to choose Stretched Gallery Wrap from the finish option dropdown.
You receive your stretched gallery wrap painting ready to hang - with a hanging wire attached behind.
The back of the Stretched Gallery Wrap looks like the image below - it has a hanging wire!
Option 3: Choose Canvas Only if you want to frame the painting yourself.
Your painting will be sent to you in an art tube - you can then frame it yourself or take it to your local framer.
Loved by our customers
The quality of the work is ten out of ten. The piece was affordable and the turnaround time was quite quick. What you see is what you get. I’ll definitely be getting my next painting from Direct Art Australia.
My wife already had a couple of pieces of custom ordered paintings she had collected throughout the last few years and with your large selection to choose from she found the perfect complimentary piece to finish off her room.
Great painting. Brightens up my living room.
Amazing piece…. even better than I expected. Thoroughly recommend Direct Art Australia.
This piece of art work exceeded our expectations. It was purchased for a 50th birthday gift for a lady who has everything! She was overwhelmed at the quality of the painting. Thank you art direct!
Product is as good or better than expected. Beautiful quality, very well packaged and delivered as promised. Very happy indeed with this artwork.
