School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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    Hugh Ramsay: a consideration of his life and work
    Gourlay, Patricia Elliston ( 1966)
    Hugh Ramsay was born on 25th May, 1877, in Glasgow, the fourth son of John and Margaret Ramsay (nee Thomson). John Ramsay appears to have followed various occupations before this time. According to D. S. Adam he served an apprenticeship as a carpenter and cabinet-maker in Shotts, Lanarkshire; in June, 1896, at the time of his marriage in Stane, Lanarkshire, he gave his occupation as ‘commission agent’; and at the time of Hugh’s birth in Glasgow he gave his occupation as ‘Die Sinker and Engraver’. Two considerations, mentioned by Adam and Mrs. Lennie, a niece of John Ramsay, might well have influenced Ramsay in his decision to emigrate: according to Adam, Margaret Ramsay was in poor health, and the doctor advised a change of climate; Mrs. Lennie, on the other hand, states that John Ramsay was attracted to Australia by the business opportunities he say there. On 5th March, 1878, John Ramsay with his wife and four sons sailed on the ‘Loch Sunart’ for Melbourne, Arriving on 7th June, 1878. The family lived at first in King Street, West Melbourne, moving in 1881 to Williams Road, Prahran, in 1885 to Erica Street, Windsor, and finally, in 1888, to Essendon. Here, according to a neighbor, the Ramsays lived in a terrace house in Bayview Terrace before moving into the substantial new home, “Clydebank”, in Vida Street. (From Chapter 1)
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    Tom Roberts and Australian impressionism, 1869 to 1903
    Spate, Virginia ( 1962)
    “To Tom Roberts, from whose quick perception and expression of the principles of impressionism in the year 1886, sprang the first national school of painting in Australia”. It was thus that Arthur Streeton in 1915, dedicated an exhibition catalogue to his friend and teacher, Tom Roberts. In this study, I propose to investigate the implications of such a claim. My thesis will be divided into four sections as follows: The first contains a discussion of the sources of Roberts’ art in Australia, England and Europe; and of the works which he brought back to Australia in 1885. It was these works which Streeton claimed had a profound effect on the painters of Melbourne. The second section is primarily concerned with the question of the nature of Roberts’ principles of impressionism; with the question of the development of such principles in the Australian context during the second half of the 1880’s. Also discussed is the nature of Roberts’ influence on the formation of the ‘national school of painting’. Section three centres around a discussion of Roberts’ subject-matter. In it are raised the problems of Roberts’ allegiance to a realist-impressionist programme and of the nature of his response to the Australian environment. The fourth section deals with the developments in Roberts’ maturing style and attitudes inspired by the change of place and of time, in the Sydney of the 1890’s.