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Frederick McCubbin (25 February, 1855 - 20
December, 1917) was an Australian painter who was
prominent in the famous Heidelberg School, one of
the most important periods in Australia's visual
arts history.

Born in Melbourne, the third of eight children of
a baker, McCubbin worked for a time as solicitor's
clerk, a stagecoach|coach painter, and in his
family's bakery business while studying art at the
National Gallery of Victoria's School of Design,
where he met Tom Roberts and studied under Eugene
von Gerard.  He also studied at the Victorian
Academy of the Arts, and in 1876 and from 1879 to
1882 exhibited there, selling his first painting
in 1880.  In this period, with the death of his
father he became responsible for running the
family business.  

By the early 1880s, his work began to attract
considerable attention and won a number of prizes
from the National Gallery, including a 30-pound
first prize in 1883 in their annual student
exhibition, and by the mid-1880s began to
concentrate more on the works of the Australian
bush that made him most famous.

In 1888, he became Master of the School of Design
at the National Gallery.  In this position he
taught a number of students who themselves became
prominent Australian artists, including Charles
Conder and Arthur Streeton. 

He continued to paint through the first two
decades of the 20th century, though by the
beginning of World War I his health began to fail.
 He traveled to England in 1907 and visited
Tasmania, but aside from these relatively short
excursions lived most of his life in Melbourne.  

McCubbin married Annie Moriarty in 1889.  They had
seven children, of whom their son Louis also
became an artist.

==Works==

McCubbin painted a broad range of scenes, from
portraits to coastal scenes, which are all
well-regarded in the history of Australian art. 
It is, however, his narrative paintings of bush
life for which he is best remembered, most notably
The Pioneer, which is his best-known work.  In
this iconic triptych (set of three paintings),
produced in 1906, McCubbin tells a story of the
"selectors" who settled much of Australia's
farmland in the latter years of the 19th century.
This triptych is a great masterpiece in Australian
painting, capturing the mood of the Heidelberg
school even if it was painted many years later.

His painting of Down on his luck shows a sombre
mood of a man with his head resting against his
arm, looking melancholy while stroking a fire with
a stick, against an Australian landscape. The
emotion of the figure is very strong, a powerful
feeling of sadness throughout the picture. It is
also a very typical Australian image, the dry
bushland with its gum trees, and the man with
workmen's trousers, boots, hat and a bushy beard.
He showed that he admired the Australian bush, for
the sadness of the man contrasts with the bright
bushland which takes up most of the picture. He
showed an understanding of what the Australian
bush looks like as well as painting it in his own
unique style.

A central figure in the Heidelberg school,
McCubbin's later works reveal the influence of his
trip to England and the influence of J.M.W. Turner

Frederick McCubbin also painted A Bush Burial, a
moving portrait of simple bush folk buring a loved
one. It was painted in 1890, at a time when the
colony was experiencing it's worst drought and
depression in the history of the colony.

"McCubbin creates an engulfing, claustrophobic
landscape by barely suggesting any horizon and
compressing midground and background. In contrast,
the bush folk are portrayed as heroic
figures."http://amol.org.au/discovernet/tales/land
scape.asp

==Location==
McCubbin's works are exhibited in most major
Australian galleries, with the National Gallery of
Victoria having some of his best.  

==References and links==
*
http://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/Artists_mccub
bin.htm Australian government website on McCubbin,
source of most of the material for this article
*
http://www.brightoncemetery.com/HistoricInterments
/150Names/mccubbinf.htm Biography - Brighton
Cemetery
http://amol.org.au/discovernet/tales/landscape.asp