Lot 126
Frederick McCubbin(1855-1917)View from Mount Macedon, 1907
2 December 2025, 19:30 AEDT
SydneyAU$30,000 - AU$50,000
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Alex Clark
Head of Sale, Senior Specialist
Merryn Schriever
Managing Director, Australia
Frederick McCubbin (1855-1917)
View from Mount Macedon, 1907
signed and dated lower left: 'F. McCubbin / 1907'
oil on board
35.5 x 25.0cm (14 x 9 13/16in).
signed and dated lower left: 'F. McCubbin / 1907'
oil on board
35.5 x 25.0cm (14 x 9 13/16in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
Mrs Nina Sheppard, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne
thence by descent
Private collection, Melbourne
Frederick McCubbin is the master of the poetic landscape, of shimmering light filtering through shaded bush glades and the gentle moments of twilight. He bathed his paintings, especially those of Mount Macedon, in an atmosphere of profound beauty and embraced tranquillity in a way unrivalled by any Australian artist.
The beginning of the 20th century was 'a period when many younger Australian artists left Australia for Europe and became luxurious figure painters, whereas those who stayed at home, including McCubbin, painted patriotically Australian landscapes for the new Commonwealth of Australia.
As the scale of these public paintings grew, so did the particular landscape subjects. Piguenit, Australia's first locally born landscape artist, painted big rivers (see lot 131), big mountains and big skies. Heysen and W Lister Lister painted big Australian gum trees. Many landscapes were painted with the new enlarged art-museum spaces in mind.
On the other hand, McCubbin painted more intimate works. Even his larger landscapes were smaller than most of those by his early twentieth-century contemporaries, and usually smaller than his own more famous earlier works. His late works were probably not painted with an art-museum public in mind, but for more private viewing. They were much admired by his artist friends, family and some discriminating collectors. These more domestic-scaled landscapes, many of them sunny, reflect the optimism McCubbin and so many other Australians felt for their newly federated nation. Unlike his earlier works there is nothing grey or melancholic about them. They reflect not only Australia's new optimism but also aspirations about Australian art itself. Writing towards the end of his life, McCubbin patriotically expressed his belief 'that the Australian Artist can best fulfil his highest destiny, by remaining in his own country and studying that which lies about him...'1
1. Anne Gray and Ron Radford, McCubbin Last Impressions 1907-17, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2009, p. 18