Frederick McCubbin

Frederick McCubbin was an Australian artist, art teacher and prominent member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism.
Born and raised in Melbourne, Victoria, McCubbin studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School under a number of artists, notably Eugene von Guerard and later George Folingsby. One of his former classmates, Tom Roberts, returned from art training in Europe in 1885, and that summer they established the Box Hill artists' camp, where they were joined by Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder. These artists formed the nucleus of what became known as the Heidelberg School, a plein air art movement named after Heidelberg, the site of another one of their camps. During this time, he taught at the National Gallery school, and later served as president of both the Victorian Artists' Society and the Australian Art Association.
Concerned with capturing the national life of Australia, McCubbin produced a number of large landscapes that reflect the melancholic themes then popular in literary accounts of European settlers' interactions with the bush.