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painter, art teacher and administrator, exhibited four paintings in the 1853 Victorian Fine Arts Society’s Exhibition at Melbourne: The Errand Boy ; Return from Hawking, after Landseer ; Portrait of a Lady ; and Portrait of G. Green, Esq., Ship-builder, Blackwall . He exhibited all four again with an unidentified portrait at the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition, giving his address as the Melbourne Hospital, where he apparently worked. Thomas Roberts was catalogued as an exhibitor at the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art but no specific exhibit is attributed to him; 'F.’ Roberts’s Portrait of J.A. Marsden, Esq. therefore may be presumed to be his. An unequivocal Thomas Roberts, by now a resident of Punt Road, South Yarra, showed eleven oil portraits at the first exhibition of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts in 1857; only one subject, The Chief Justice , was identified. Of his several portraits of unidentified gentlemen, one was described by 'Christopher Sly’ ( James Neild ) in the Examiner as 'a satin cravat surrounded by a mask’. The following year, still from South Yarra, Thomas Roberts exhibited two oil portraits at the 1858 Victorian Industrial Society Exhibition. That of Mr Green, Shipowner of Poplar, London had previously appeared in the Victorian Fine Arts Society’s Exhibition (for sale) and at the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition; it must also have had a pre-colonial existence in London’s East End. The other was a portrait of His Excellency Sir Henry Barkly, Governor of Victoria.

By 1861 Roberts was a drawing master at Geelong, employed by the Department of Education and living in Bellerine Street. He apparently briefly shared his brother William 's photographic studio before moving to Sydney. In October Mr Thomas Roberts had 'just completed’ a large, 7 × 5½ feet (2.13 × 1.67 m), oil portrait in Sydney for the lady members of the congregation of St Barnabas’s Church of England in George Street (Broadway), who had commissioned a portrait of their minister 'as a token of their Christian regard’. It depicted Rev. Thomas Smith 'in his gown, with a book in his hand, as though he were addressing an audience’ and the Sydney Morning Herald considered the likeness and attitude to be good and the whole 'painted in a superior style of art’. By 1863 he was advertising as 'Professor T. Roberts, lately National Drawing Master, Grammar Schools, Victoria’, now at 402 George Street. He was still in Sydney in 1865, when he inscribed an oil on academy board painting of a dying man seated in a library surrounded by his family (Mitchell Library), at which time he seems to have been employed at the 'Penal Refuge’ in Pitt Street.

Thomas Roberts soon returned to Melbourne – if he was the undifferentiated Mr Roberts who painted several transparencies for the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to Melbourne in November 1867. His transparency, 10 feet 3 inches x 5 feet 3 inches (3.12 × 1.60 m), displayed by T. Stokes, an engraver of Collins Street, was described as having 'in the centre, a bust of His Royal Highness; to the right, the Galatea in full sail…beneath, a representation of the new town-hall, coloured in gold’. Another of Roberts’s transparencies, 17 × 9 feet (5.18 × 2.74 m), displayed by the Bourke Street drapers G. & R. Meares, depicted 'Neptune’s car, drawn by sea-horses, and figures of Industry and Commerce on either side…the various trading interests are represented’.

Then he apparently raced Prince Alfred to Sydney (as did other artists). In January 1868, Mr Thomas Roberts was stated to have painted a large transparency for the Sydney Benevolent Asylum bearing the words 'Light in Darkness; or, Religion and Civilization amidst Heathen Crimes’. Its chief subject (apart from the obligatory life-size Prince Alfred) was the genius of painting heralding the royal visitor, described as 'a fine female figure, dipping her brush in the rainbow, with the prismatic colours on her palette’. The equally obligatory portrait of the Galatea entering Port Jackson was complemented by far less conventional representations. On one side was 'a cornfield, a crystal palace, and love, labour, peace and plenty’, while the other depicted scientific progress, 'from the kettle and kite to the powers of steam and the wonders of electricity, and from the camera to photography’, symbolised by 'three cupids representing Watt, Franklin and Daguerre. Our Prince travels by steam, talks by lightning, and paints by the rays of light.’

Afterwards, Roberts may have rejoined the photographic firm of Roberts Brothers at Ballarat and worked mainly as a colourist, but nothing certain is known of him beyond this date. When William Roberts moved to Bourke Street, Melbourne in 1870 the studio was in his name alone. This firm seems to have acquired a second Thomas (William) Roberts after moving to Melbourne, one who was to become far more famous as a painter. The young Heidelberg School painter Tom Roberts apparently moved from working for the photographer Isidor Cohen at Collingwood to the studio of William Roberts & Co. in Bourke Street in about 1872 and remained there under R. Stewart when 'Messrs Roberts & Co.’ left for Sydney in about 1874. The Victorian career of this forgotten Thomas Roberts perhaps explains why the younger man always used the abbreviated form of his Christian name professionally, a rare choice at the time.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011