''Bailed Up'' is a 1895 painting by Australian artist

Tom Roberts Thomas William Roberts (8 March 185614 September 1931) was an English-born Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism. After studying in Melbourne, he travelled to Europe i ...

. The painting depicts a stage coach being held up by

bushranger Bushrangers were originally escaped convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who used the bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term had evolved to refer to those who took up "robbery under ...

s in an isolated, forested section of a back road. The painting is part of the collection of the

Art Gallery of New South Wales The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most importa ...

. and has been described by one former Senior Curator as "the greatest Australian landscape ever painted".

Composition

Roberts painted the work while staying at ''Newstead''

sheep station A sheep station is a large property ( station, the equivalent of a ranch) in Australia or New Zealand, whose main activity is the raising of sheep for their wool and/or meat. In Australia, sheep stations are usually in the south-east or sout ...

—near

Inverell, New South Wales Inverell is a large town in northern New South Wales, Australia, situated on the Macintyre River, close to the Queensland border. It is also the centre of Inverell Shire. Inverell is located on the Gwydir Highway on the western slopes of the ...

—owned by his friend Duncan Anderson. He had earlier painted '' The Golden Fleece'', his second painting depicting

sheep shearing Sheep shearing is the process by which the woollen fleece of a sheep is cut off. The person who removes the sheep's wool is called a '' shearer''. Typically each adult sheep is shorn once each year (a sheep may be said to have been "shorn" or ...

, while at ''Newstead''. The notorious bushranger

Captain Thunderbolt Frederick Wordsworth Ward (1835 – 25 May 1870), better known by the self-styled pseudonym of Captain Thunderbolt, was an Australian bushranger renowned for escaping from Cockatoo Island, and also for his reputation as the "gentleman bushra ...

had been active in the Inverell area more than twenty five years earlier and Roberts conceived an idea of painting a bushranging scene. Roberts found his location for the painting along the road between ''Newstead'' and ''Paradise'', a neighbouring station. The location was remote, on a flat bend on an uphill stretch of the road, surrounded by "grass trees and a forest of tall gums." At this spot Roberts, with assistance from the Anderson family, constructed a viewing platform in a tree growing on the slope below the road, thus setting himself up at road level. Roberts painted the

Cobb and Co Cobb & Co was the name used by many successful sometimes quite independent Australian coaching businesses. The first was established in 1853 by American Freeman Cobb and his partners. The name Cobb & Co grew to great prominence in the late 19th ...

coach in Inverell and modelled the characters in the painting on people in Inverell and station hands at ''Newstead''. Before starting on the main canvas Roberts "made tiny drawings and an oil sketch of how he wanted the scene to look."

Reception

Once complete, Roberts exhibited ''Bailed Up'' in Sydney and Melbourne. Critical reception to the work was mixed; with comment in the press about "the way the legs of the men, or the skin of the horses had been depicted" among other things. Pearce considered that " rhaps unsatisfactory pictorial resolution was sensed" by collectors. Regardless, for a thirty-year period the painting failed to find a buyer. Roberts reduced his asking price from £275 to 75

guineas The guinea (; commonly abbreviated gn., or gns. in plural) was a coin, minted in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Great Britain between 1663 and 1814, that contained approximately one-quarter of an ounce of gold. The name came from t ...

in 1900 but still no buyer could be found. In 1927, Roberts reworked the painting and the extent of this rework has been difficult to ascertain. Using X-ray photography, art historians now think that Roberts simplified the work considerably, making it flatter and more abstract, in the

modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

style that had come into vogue at that time. The painting was finally sold for 500 guineas in 1928, purchased by a Sydney solicitor, J. W. Maund. Maund was also a trustee of the

and he immediately lent the painting to the gallery—selling it to them five years later. En route to an exhibition in Melbourne in 1956—part of the cultural program of the

1956 Summer Olympics The 1956 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, from 22 November to 8 December 1956, with the exception of the equestrian events, whi ...

— the painting fell off the back of a truck. The painting was damaged but successfully restored.

Cultural references

Australian artist

Ben Quilty Ben Quilty (born 1973) is an Australian artist and social commentator, who has won a series of painting prizes: the 2014 Prudential Eye Award, 2011 Archibald Prize, and 2009 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. He has been described as one of Au ...

reworked ''Bailed Up'' in his 2004 painting ''Gold Soil Wealth for Toil''. It was acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.Ingram, Terry (7 October 2004)
"Australian icons on show"
Australian Financial Review. Retrieved 26 December 2019.

References

External links

Tom Roberts' ''Bailed Up''
– National Film and Sound Archive

Composition

Reception

Cultural references

References

External links

Further reading