TOM ROBERTS A MODERN ANDROMEDA, 1891– 92 by Deutscher and Hackett

TOM ROBERTS A MODERN ANDROMEDA, 1891 – 92 AUCTION • MELBOURNE • 10 NOVEMBER 2021

melbourne auction sydney viewing

melbourne viewing

absentee/telephone bids live online bidding

WEDNESDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2021 7:00 pm 105 commercial road, south yarra, vic THURSDAY 21 OCTOBER – SUNDAY 31 OCTOBER 11:00 am – 6:00 pm 36 gosbell street paddington, nsw telephone: 02 9287 0600 FRIDAY 5 NOVEMBER – TUESDAY 9 NOVEMBER 11:00 am – 6:00 pm 105 commercial road south yarra, vic telephone: 03 9865 6333 email bids to: info@deutscherandhackett.com telephone: 03 9865 6333 fax: 03 9865 6344 www.deutscherandhackett.com/watch-live-auction

www.deutscherandhackett.com • info@deutscherandhackett.com

Selected Australian and International Fine Art

TOM ROBERTS (1856 – 1931)

A Modern Andromeda, 1891 – 92 Lot 31

TOM ROB ERTS - A M ODERN ANDROME A , 1891 – 92

31 TOM ROBERTS (1856 – 1931)

A MODERN ANDROMEDA, 1891 – 92 oil on wood panel 45.0 x 10.8 cm signed and dated lower left: Tom Roberts . / 1892 Henry W Callan, Sydney, framers label attached verso ESTIMATE: $400,000 – 600,000

PROVENANCE Henri Kowalski (1841 – 1916), Sydney and Plouër-sur-Rance, France Thence by descent Louise Kowalski (née Éloy, AKA Louise Ferraris, 1844 – 1922, m.1869), Château du Chêne-Vert, Plouër-sur-Rance, France Thence by descent Madame Lemonnier, niece of the above, Château du Chêne-Vert, Plouër-sur-Rance, France Mr Roland Brouard, France, 1924, along with purchase of the Château du Chêne-Vert, Plouër-sur-Rance, France Thence by descent Louise Brouard (née Louët), France, wife of the above, in 1934 Thence by descent Marie-Thérèse Rouxel (née Brouard), Nantes, daughter of the above, in 1969 Jack-Philippe Ruellan S.A.R.L., Vannes, France, 27 February 2021, lot 99 (as ‘Jeune Fille à l’ombrelle, assise sur un rocher’) Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED Spring Exhibition, Art Society of New South Wales, Sydney, 1892, cat. 50 LITERATURE Eagle, M., The Oil Paintings of Tom Roberts in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997, p. 61 n. 6

TOM ROB ERTS - A M ODERN ANDROME A , 1891 – 92

TOM ROBERTS Recently rediscovered and repatriated from a private collection in France Recently rediscovered and repatriated from a private collection in France, Tom Roberts’ A Modern Andromeda, 1891-92 is, although modest in scale, a painting of considerable art historical significance. Not only is it a fine example of the artist’s simultaneously crisp and fluent Naturalist style, completed at a high point in his career1, but it also carries a rich freight of associations and information – revealing much about the life (and loves?) of the artist; painting in Melbourne and Sydney at the time; and the close links between various branches of the arts in the late 19th century. In ‘Marvellous Melbourne’, financial capital of the Australian colonies, a collapse in property prices in 1889 and associated building society failures the following year created wider economic anxieties. The market for contemporary art had never been particularly secure, and Victoria’s painters had long contested the National Gallery of Victoria’s acquisition policies, which did not favour local artists. These factors, together with a desire to explore landscapes and pastoral industry ‘national subjects’ further afield, took Tom Roberts away from the city. In 1890 – 91, he was only sporadically to be found at his Melbourne studio, having gone ‘on the wallaby’ to Tasmania, East Gippsland and the Central Highlands, as well as back to Corowa on the Murray, where he had begun painting Shearing the Rams in 1889. Eventually – possibly in immediate pursuit of the prospect of a £75 acquisition from a competition for ‘watercolour drawings illustrating what is most picturesque in the scenery of New South Wales, especially in the remoter districts of the colony,’ 2 – Roberts and his friend and Heidelberg School colleague, Arthur Streeton (together with Streeton’s mother), took ship for Sydney in the Massilia in early September.

Roberts went straight to Curlew Camp, a cheap-rent single men’s tent village on the North Shore at Little Sirius Cove, Mosman Bay. Apart from a brief visit to the Hunter River in pursuit of a watercolour subject (one of his entries in the National Gallery’s watercolour exhibition in 1891 was Coaling at Newcastle), he would remain there throughout the spring and summer, until he returned to Melbourne for a month in February 1892. 3 The camp was an initiative of Reuben Brasch, Sydney clothing manufacturer and retailer and an acquaintance of the artist.4 Just as Roberts’ good friend and fellow Box Hill plein-airiste, Louis Abrahams, had provided the cedar cigar box lids used for many of Roberts’, Streeton’s and Conder’s ‘9 by 5 Impressions’, it appears that so did Reuben Brasch supply the long, narrow ‘drapers’ panel’ supports that became a feature of the Australian Naturalists’ (and particularly Streeton’s) images of Sydney Harbour. A Modern Andromeda would appear to be the first work to employ this striking format, pre-dating both Streeton’s horizontal Harbours of 1893 and his vertical Sirius Cove ‘keyholes’ of 1895. Reuben Brasch’s sister Golda had married Louis Abrahams in March 1888, and Roberts was a witness at the wedding, held in the Brasch family home in Sydney. It was probably on that occasion that Roberts first met Reuben and Golda’s little sister, the teenage Selena Venus. When he returned to Sydney and settled at Curlew camp, Roberts renewed his connection with the young woman, almost immediately enlisting her to pose in the coastal landscape. The rocks on which the figure in the present work is sitting look very much like the tumble of sandstone boulders on the eastern side of Sirius Cove, while the wattle blossom at the top of the composition clearly implies a springtime sitting.

Tom Roberts in a boat at Curlew Camp, Mosman, Sydney, c.1895 photographer unknown reproduced in Thoms, A., Bohemians in the Bush: The Artists’ Camps of Mosman, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1991, p. 58.

Arthur Streeton Near Streeton’s camp at Sirius Cove, 1892 oil on canvas on cardboard 30.4 x 22.7 cm New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, New South Wales Bequest of Howard Hinton, 1948

This latter assumption is reinforced by correspondence from Streeton, who visited the camp probably late September, before heading up to Glenbrook to paint Fire’s On, 1891 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney). In letters written from Melbourne the following January, Streeton inquires ‘How also dear Mossmans + your pretty sitter with abundant hair fanned by the afternoon breeze at the point,’ 5 and also specifically references a small painting of ‘Miss_____ on the rocks,’ advising Roberts not to let the work sell cheaply: ‘it is so charming – keep it as a memento of the place.’6 Is Streeton’s discretion with regard to the sitter’s identity a bit of a tease, a suggestion that Roberts may have harboured some amorous intent in relation to the young Miss Brasch? There is something admiring, even worshipful in the low da sotto in sù viewpoint, with the blue dress seen against the blue Sydney sky making the figure of the girl somehow ethereal, heavenly. The limpid cerulean of the subtropical sky seems to have been just what Roberts craved after a grey winter down south; we see that colour again in the extravagant bows of another of his entries in the 1892 Art Society exhibition, The Paris Hat, 1892 (New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale). In the present picture there is even a tiny shard of summer, a triangle of blue sky, visible through the rocks.

In any event, Roberts was certainly very taken with Lena as a model; she appears in no fewer than half a dozen pictures over the ensuing decade.7 The interest is perfectly understandable. Lena Brasch was an attractive, vivacious, talented young woman, who would later make something of a name for herself on the London stage. Not surprisingly, given her family’s pianoimporting business background, she was also ‘a pianiste of no mean ability,’ 8 and Roberts is known to have been particularly fond of music.9 This musical connection also explains the present work’s ‘disappearance’ for more than a century. Before its recent return to Australia, the painting passed by descent and estate purchase from the family of pianist, composer and teacher Henri Kowalski. Of Polish heritage but Breton-born and Paris-trained, Kowalski performed in Brussels, London, the United States and Canada before coming to Australia both as a judge for the Fine Arts section of the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition,

TOM ROB ERTS - A MODERN ANDROME A , 1891 – 92

Lena Brasch, c.1901 Photographer: H. Walter Barnett signed and inscribed by Lena Brasch: To Smike gelatin silver photograph printed image 19.2 x 10.5 cm sheet 19.2 x 10.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1993

Cover and title page for ‘The Olga Waltz’ Composed by Lena V. Brasch for piano, 1894 4th edition, drawn by Hal Waugh and featuring a portrait of Olga Nethersole National Library of Australia, Canberra

and to give concert performances. During this visit he enthusiastically embraced the local culture; he collaborated with Victorian novelist and poet Marcus Clarke on a comic opera, Queen Venus, and even composed a waltz entitled The Belles of Melbourne. Returning to Australia in 1885, Kowalski lived and worked in Sydney for twelve years, during which time he ‘conducted choirs, orchestras and operas, set up music societies, and had an extensive private teaching practice and a major public profile as a performer. He also set up a public examination board and worked as a music critic.’10

published composition, The Olga Waltz, includes a personal testimonial from the maestro.12 What is beyond doubt is that Kowalski was familiar with the present painting; he and his violinist compatriot Horace Poussard performed a duet at a conversazione held in association with

Kowalski was definitely known to Tom Roberts; a portrait was included in the artist’s extensive and wide-ranging 1900 exhibition and sale.11 Given Sydney’s relatively small musical community, he is also likely to have been familiar with the piano-retailing Brasch family, including young Lena: she may have been one of the 45 pupils who signed an illuminated address presented to him by the Mayor of Sydney in October 1892, while a couple of years later an advertisement for her first

the 1892 Art Society exhibition at which the work was first shown.13 But what is the meaning of the curious title? In ancient Greek mythology, Andromeda was the daughter of Cepheus, king of Aethiopia. Andromeda’s mother, Cassiopeia, boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nereids, sea-sprite companions of the ocean god Poseidon, and in revenge for this hubristic affront, Poseidon sent a tidal wave and the sea-monster Cetus to ravage the Aethiopian coast. Having been told by an oracle that in order to placate the god he must sacrifice his daughter, King Cepheus had Andromeda chained to a rock at the edge of the sea to await her doom. Happily, the hero Perseus, flying home after having slain the Gorgon, saw the girl, killed the monster and (naturally) claimed Andromeda in marriage.

Reuben Brasch Department Store, Hyde Park Corner, Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, c.1914, with parapet inscribed: From Maker to Weaver / Est. 1881 City of Sydney Archives, Sydney

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the image of the naked, constrained and vulnerable Andromeda appealed to patriarchal sensibilities, with Andromeda in chains becoming a familiar trope through the writings of the Greek playwrights Sophocles and Euripides and the Roman poet Ovid, and accordingly, a persistent focus of the male gaze in European art – from Pompeiian wall painting to the Renaissance Piero di Cosimo, from Titian and Vasari to Rubens and Rembrandt.14 The popularity of the subject persisted through the 19th century and into Roberts’ time, as can be seen in works by (inter alia) Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Doré and Gustave Moreau.15 In the British tradition with which Roberts was most familiar, the Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones developed (though never completed) a full cycle of Perseus pictures for the Music Room of young Conservative politician Arthur Balfour’s house in Carlton Gardens, London; a preparatory painting for this series depicting the Andromeda episode is now held by the Art Gallery of South Australia.16

In relation to the present picture, however, there is a more concrete and plausible link to a specific work by Sir Frederic (later Lord) Leighton. A member of the Royal Academy since 1868, its President since 1878, created a baronet in 1886, an officer of the Légion d’honneur and a member of the Institut de France, in 1891 Leighton’s reputation was at its height, even as far from London as the Australian colonies. That year the Victorian National Gallery purchased his The Garden of the Hesperides, and its Sydney counterpart a photograph of The Bath of Psyche, while in an article on the New South Wales collection written for the Melbourne Argus, Roberts specifically mentioned both Leighton’s classical-domestic fantasy Wedded (purchased 1882), and watercolours for the Arts of industry… frescoes at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert).17 In 1891, Leighton painted his version of the Andromeda myth, with the sea-monster depicted more as a dragon than as a whale or crocodile. Perseus and Andromeda was shown in the RA’s summer exhibition, and was reproduced in the London Art Journal for June.

TOM ROB ERTS - A MODERN ANDROME A , 1891 – 92

The present work may be considered an oblique, perhaps slightly comic homage to the master’s work. Most obviously, the dragon bat-wings that overshadow the princess in Leighton’s picture have a marked formal resemblance to the spread-ribbed parasol above Roberts’ sitter. There might also be a further visual pun in the golden wattle in painting’s top left corner: an antipodean answer to the glowing aureole that surrounds Leighton’s flying Perseus-on-Pegasus. Whether or not such a direct reference to Leighton is intended, characterising a girl in a frock on a rock as Andromeda is sufficient to indicate both Roberts’ literacy in classical iconography and his droll humour, the fruitful tension between his strong, RA-instilled feeling for history and tradition and his keen awareness of and participation in bourgeois-industrial colonial modernity. David Hansen is grateful to Dr Leigh Astbury and to Dr Keren Hammerschlag, Lecturer in Art History and Art Theory, Australian National University, for their assistance in preparing this catalogue essay. DR DAVID HANSEN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, CENTRE FOR ART HISTORY & ART THEORY, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Above: The Sydney Art Society’s Exhibition – “Varnishing Day” artist unknown Published in: ‘The Art Society’s Exhibition’, Sydney News, 3 September 1892, p. 4

6. Letter, Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts, 16 January 1892, Roberts Papers, ML A2478, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney. Mary Eagle, formerly Senior Curator of Australian Art at the National Gallery of Australia, first proposed that the work to which Streeton is referring in this letter is A Modern Andromeda (then untraced). See Mary Eagle, The oil paintings of Tom Roberts in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997, p. 61 n. 6 7. (profile portrait sketch of Lena Brasch) c. 1892, private collection; sold Christie’s Australia November 1992); (unfinished portrait study) 1893, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; An eastern princess 1893, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Plink a plong 1893, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; and possibly the later A study of Jephthah’s daughter 1899, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. The profile sketch also has a press cutting pasted on the reverse (‘Australians in England’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 January 1905, p. 5) which mentions another, still later portrait of Lena, from 1904. By this time Lena was evidently sufficiently intimate with the Heidelberg School artists to have known and used their nicknames. A 1901 portrait photograph by Walter Barnett that she gave to Streeton (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra) is inscribed ’To Smike.’ 8. ‘The theatre: musical and dramatic notes’, The Star (Christchurch), 26 September 1904, p.4

Frederic Leighton Perseus and Andromeda, 1891 oil on canvas 235.0 x 129.2 cm Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK

1. 1891-2 was something of an annus mirabilis for Tom Roberts. He completed the large, ambitious A Break Away! 1891 (Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide), while the Art Society of New South Wales show in which the present work was first shown included the formal triptych of ‘Church, State and the Law’ portraits (Cardinal Moran, Sir Henry Parkes and Sir William Windeyer); the sensitive Eileen, 1892 and the powerful Aboriginal Head - Charlie Turner, 1892 (both Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney). 1892 was also the year he travelled north to Queensland and the Torres Strait, a journey that generated some memorable images, particularly of First Nations Australians. 2. The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 February 1891, p. 7 3. Curlew Camp would remain the artist’s main residence until his marriage to Lillie Williamson in April 1896.

9. The painter’s devotion to the Euterpean muse is amply attested not only in letters, records of attendance at concerts, and the various musical activities of the clubs and societies with which he was associated, but also in his personal relationships: with Prof. G.W.L. Marshall-Hall, Melbourne’s musical colossus of the 1890s and early 1900s, with life-long friend S.W. Pring, an amateur flautist, and with Duncan Anderson of ‘Newstead’ station, a keen cornetist. Roberts’ oeuvre includes numerous musical subjects: portraits of musicians Nellie Billings (1900), Alice Bryant (1899), Daddy Hallawell (late 1890s), Alfred Hill (1897), Johann Kruse (1895), Marshall-Hall, of course, and Nellie Melba (c.1902), as well as subject pictures such as The violin lesson, c. 1889 (National Gallery of Victoria); Andante, 1889 (Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide); The troubadour of Scott’s, c.1889 (Westpac Corporate Art Collection, Sydney); and Adagio, c.1893 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney). See Kertesz, E., ‘Music and the Australian Impressionists’, in Gray, A. and Hesson, A. (eds), SheOak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism, Thames & Hudson, in association with the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne p. 229). Kertesz believes the violinist in this last to be ‘probably Lena Brasch’; it is here suggested that the subject is more likely to be Bessie Doyle, one of whose signature performance pieces was the Adagio from Spohr’s 9th concerto in D minor. Miss Doyle performed extensively in Sydney and country New South Wales between June and November 1892, and she and Henri Kowalski headlined a concert in Sydney on 5 November (The Daily Telegraph, 2 November 1892, p. 2). 10. Murphy, K., ‘Henri Kowalski (1841-1916): a French musician in colonial Australia’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 48 no. 3, August 2017, pp. 358 – 9 11. ‘Sale of Mr Roberts’s paintings’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November 1900, p. 5 12. ‘The Olga Waltz by Lena V. Brasch’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June 1894, p. 2. Kowalski’s encomium reads: ‘I like the Strauss character of the Olga Waltz, and the first musical steps of Miss Lena V. Brasch deserve good commendation from both dilettanti and choreograph [sic]’ The waltz, written for piano, was named in honour of the actress Olga Nethersole. 13. ‘Art Society’, The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 10 September 1892, p. 581 14. Unknown artist, Perseus freeing Andromeda, c. 50-75 BCE, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples; Piero di Cosimo, Andromeda freed by Perseus, c. 1510-15, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence; Tiziano Vecelli, Perseus and Andromeda, 1553-59, Wallace Collection, London; Giorgio Vasari, Perseus and Andromeda, 1570-72, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence; Peter Paul Rubens, Perseus and Andromeda, c. 1622, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg; Rembrandt van Rijn, Andromeda chained to the rocks, c.1630, Mauritshuis, The Hague

4. Marcus Brasch and his brother Wolfe were Prussian Jews who had migrated to London in 1848, then to Melbourne in 1866; Wolfe and his extensive family later moved to Sydney. The family music store (employing the persuasive slogan ‘A home is not a home without a piano’) eventually expanded to become (with the Germanic ‘c’ dropped during the Great War) the national music and electronics chain Brashs.

16. Edward Burne-Jones, Perseus and Andromeda (‘The rock of doom’ and ‘The doom fulfilled’) 1876, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

5. Letter, Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts, 17 January 1892, Roberts Papers, ML A2428, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

17. ‘Art’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 December 1891, p. 4; Tom Roberts, ‘The National Art Gallery of New South Wales’, The Argus, 31 October 1891, p. 4

15. Eugène Delacroix, Perseus and Andromeda, c. 1853, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; Gustave Doré, Andromeda, 1869, private collection; Gustave Moreau, Perseus and Andromeda, 1870, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery

TOM ROB ERTS - A MODERN ANDROME A , 1891 – 92

Henri’s Kowalski’s contributions to music in Australia demonstrate a strong French presence in the colonies and an appreciation for itinerant musical societies bringing the latest developments to the most far-flung of Imperial dominions. Le Courrier Australien, a French language newspaper was established in the early 1890s, and Kowalski contributed musical critiques for this publication as early as July of 1892.1 Kowalski was serious about introducing French music and modes of composition into mainstream Australian society, and in addition to being appointed conductor of the Sydney Philharmonic Society from 1885 – 1889, in 1887 he founded The French Musical Instrument Depot, selling French Pleyel pianofortes and distributing sheet music on Sydney’s George Street. 2 From this address, 325 George St, he published new compositions: Festal Lyric (1893) Twilight of Love (1894), Future Life (1895) and others. Kowalski even modelled a musical examination system based on the Paris Conservatoire, which he called the Australian Musical Association, which flourished until Kowalski left Australia in 1896. The French Musical Depot was declared bankrupt in 1898. 3 1. Murphy, K., ‘The French Connection’, Australian Financial Review, Sydney, 28 December 2011 2. Wood, E., “Kowalski, Henri,” New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980, vol. 10, p. 223 and Davison, D., ‘Henri Kowalski. French Musician in Melbourne’, Explorations, Melbourne, No. 1, May 1985, pp. 19-21 3. The Evening News, Sydney, 22 March 1898, p. 6

Henri Kowalski, pianist and composer, 1893 Photographer: H. Walter Barnett gelatin silver photograph 20.4 × 15.3 cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Mrs Rex Duckett, 1973

Château du Chêne-Vert, Plouër-sur-Rance, France photographer unknown, nd

While Henri Kowalski was of esteemed Breton heritage through his mother, the châteaux of Vaux-Carheil and Péhou (known as the Chêne Vert) along the banks of the river Rance near Dinan in Brittany, where the painting was held for over 100 years, belonged to his wife, the famous actress Louise Éloy (better known under her stage name ‘La Ferraris’).1 Purported to have been a gift from Mlle Éloy’s lover, the royal Russian diplomat Alexandre Basilewsky, the château was purchased for a sum of 24,000 francs on the 2 June 1866. 2 When the actress married Henri Kowalski three years later, on the 22nd September 1869, the renovated domaine became their pied-à-terre while in France, and a sumptuous location for their outdoor music performances. After having been bequeathed to a niece after Mme Kowalski’s death, the château and its contents were purchased in 1924 by Roland Brouard. The painting has stayed within the Brouard family since this date, with a descendant fondly remembering it on display in her parent’s living room in Nantes. 3

1. Mussat, M-C., Le pianiste-compositeur Henri Kowalski (1841-1916) : un grand voyageur, Sociéte d’histoire et d’archéologique de Bretagne, Rennes, 1996, pp. 253 – 272 2. Inventaire du patrimoine culturel en Bretagne, dossier IA22132469, La region Bretagne, 2015 [http://patrimoine.bzh/gertrude-diffusion/dossier/chateau-desvaux-carheil-plouer-sur-rance/051b498d-27bf-4a9c-80c0-fc4007f29724] (accessed 21/09/21) 3. Letter from Laurence Bouton, granddaughter of Roland Brouard, dated 3rd March 2021

TOM ROB ERTS - A MODERN ANDROME A , 1891 – 92

Henry W. Callan was a frame maker and art dealer, with premises Henry Callan and Son, at 318 George Street, Sydney between 1885-1900, close to locations often frequented by Tom Roberts: Edward Bevan’s studio [Paling Building, 365 George Street] and Henri Kowalski’s musical instrument shop, The French Musical Instrument Depot [325 George Street]. In April 1890 the Art Society of New South Wales exhibition was held at the Callan premises. During the 1890s Henry W Callan and Son enjoyed a reciprocal arrangement with John Thallon framers in Melbourne with each business acting as interstate agent for crating, transport and deliveries of works of art. At least four of the eight paintings exhibited by Tom Roberts in the 1892 Art Society of New South Wales exhibition, including A Modern Andromeda, were framed by Henry Callan or inscribed c/o Henry Callan verso, with Callan then acting as agent or dealer for Roberts. By 1902 the Art Gallery of New South Wales were using the services of Henry Callan as private picture restorer.