Lot 128
Arthur Streeton(1867-1943)View Across Windsor, c.1915
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
Arthur Streeton (1867-1943)
View Across Windsor, c.1915
signed lower left: 'A. Streeton'
oil on canvas
50.0 x 60.0cm (19 11/16 x 23 5/8in).
signed lower left: 'A. Streeton'
oil on canvas
50.0 x 60.0cm (19 11/16 x 23 5/8in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
Sir Thomas Bilbe Robinson, United Kingdom, acquired from the artist c.1915
thence by descent
Private collection, United Kingdom
Arthur Streeton left Australia in 1897, the lure of London and international exposure a rite of passage for many Australian artists before him. Streeton left behind the sustained success he had built over the previous decade. With the recent purchase of The Purple Noon's Transparent Might by the National Gallery of Victoria, Streeton set sail with great confidence in establishing himself in the artistic capital of the British Empire.
Streeton arrived in London having spent five months en route painting in Cairo. His early London years were met with much angst and frustration. He found it challenging to portray the English landscape, a stark contrast to the Australian countryside in which he painted with such ease and self-assurance. Apart from a few visits home, he spent the years leading up to World War I based in London, during this period Streeton's art began to win recognition in England, France and at the international exhibitions held in the United States of America.
On 24 April 1915 Streeton enlisted as a private in the Australian Army Medical Corps and was posted to Wandsworth working as an orderly for the next two years before being appointed an official war artist in 1918, where he spent two periods in France documenting the Western Front for the Commonwealth government. It was during this time the present work, a Turneresque view overlooking Windsor, was acquired directly from Streeton by Sir Thomas Bilbe Robinson.
Sir Robinson was an English born Australian businessmen and public servant. Robinson had joined the Queensland Volunteer Force where he rose to the rank of Major in the Moreton Regiment in 1886, before retiring in 1893. Following a return to London, in 1910 he was appointed Queensland Agent General, where he encouraged British migration to Queensland and promoted the state's export industries. It would be this role that led to Robinson playing an instrumental part in feeding the Allied troops as he oversaw supplies, often shipped from Queensland, to continental Europe.