Waiting

Trained at the Royal Academy schools in London and Académie Julian in Paris, Gordon Coutts arrived in Melbourne and took up studies at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. He met Tom Roberts there, whose influence is reflected in this portrait of a young woman seated in the waiting room of a wayside station in the bush. The model, in fact, posed inside a studio, with the background painted around her afterwards.

This popular painting is the artist's most esteemed Australian work. The femininity of the sitter and her fashionable attire were trademarks of portrait and genre styles at the time.