The gardener

This important work was painted around 1910 after McCubbin had returned from his first overseas trip and was living in South Yarra. With it’s sparkling texture and romantic colour it shows the influence of Turner whom McCubbin so admired. The looseness of the paint work and the use of the palette knife is very free and more impressionist in the French tradition than other paintings of the Australian Impressionist group. The scene, probably in the artist’s back garden, reveals McCubbin’s innate lyricism and the choice of his humble subject reveals his affinity to Buvelot. The beauty and vitality of the painting shows McCubbin at the peak of this late style.