Tom Roberts' The Golden Fleece shearing farm, Newstead sold
Paraway Pastoral has purchased the Inverell property, Newstead which is where the Australian artist Tom Roberts painted, The Golden Fleece Shearing at Newstead while staying at the farm then owned by the Anderson family in 1894.
Travelling around eastern Australia, Roberts first came to Inverell in the summer of 1893, staying for five months at Newstead, the property of his friend Duncan Anderson, and later returned to the area several times.
To view the work, click here.
Involving himself in the lifestyle of the northern NSW sheep property and of the Inverell township, he produced 13 of his most acclaimed paintings there.
Roberts's final visit to Inverell was in 1900; three years later, he left for England where he spent the next 16 years.
He returned to Australia in 1923 and died in 1931.
It was in 1857, the manager of Newstead wrote to Mary Anderson, the property's absent owner, that a new shearing shed was nearing completion, "62 feet by 18 feet with skillions on either side, large enough to hold from seven to eight hundred sheep".
Shearing at Newstead - better known as The Golden Fleece, and destined to become one of Australia's great iconic pictures - was painted there by Tom Roberts. In 1895 The Sydney Morning Herald named it "the great picture of the year" and the Art Gallery of NSW bought it for 275 guineas. It was shown around the world. Critic R.A.M. Stevenson's commenting on Shearing at Newstead when he saw it in London in 1898 that it was "tight, hard and inartistic".
Roberts was a leading founder of the Heidelberg School, the group of late 19th-century painters who set out to develop a distinctly Australian style, responding to colour and light, and who became renowned for their blue-gold landscapes.
First settled by Europeans in 1841, Newstead is one of the oldest homesteads in the state's north. For most of its years, it was home to two family dynasties, including the ancestors of the former deputy prime minister, John Anderson.
In 2001 it became a religious retreat for a controversial American order, the Bruderhof Communities, before being sold in 2005 to the Sundown Pastoral Company.
The Paraway company has also purchase another Inverell property from Sundown Pastoral Company, Paradise.
The Land says Paraway will use the properties, which are described by local agents as “signature properties”, to boost its cattle finishing capacity.
Newstead totals 4,848 hectares and consists of improved pastures for beef production as well as growing crops. Neighbouring property Paradise totals 6,500 ha.
Sundown was founded by Neil Statham in 1964 and is still owned and operated by the Statham family with Neil’s son David at the helm.