Curio

State Library of New South Wales

A gleam of light

Frederick (Fred) McCubbin, c.1910
ML 1293
Oil painting
Helen Selle bequest 2012

This is the Library’s first MCubbin painting and depicts a view of the valley below McCubbin’s Mount Madedon home, Fontainebleau.

The paint on the surface

By Sale catalogue, Sotheby’s Australia, November 1993, lot 265

As in many of his paintings of the bush, the undergrowth in the foreground has been painted, and when dried, smoothed back with pumice stone and then repainted so that the warmth and glow of the first layer of paint highlights the paint on the surface.