Page:The art of Arthur Streeton .. (IA artofarthurstree00stre).pdf/16

2 Streeton and Roberts started teaching, but not too seriously, in the buildings of the Commercial Union Insurance Co., Hunter Street, opposite the "Herald" Office, and from there they headed an insurrection against the Art Society. They held their first exbition,exhibition [sic] under the name of "The Society of Artists," in a skating rink in York Street.

I saw Streeton fairly often at this time. He lived in a camp at Little Sirius Cove, Mosman, where he was joined later on by Tom Roberts. He used to do the marketing, and on arriving at the Musgrave Street wharf had to walk around the point and blow a whistle for the boat to come across from the camp. To see him returning on Saturday nights, laden with parcels of bread, beer and beef, and as merry the while as a boy at a picnic, was a delight. In those days the painters' material wants were few, but their hopes were unbounded.

He was cheerful and fond of company, and seemed to be quite uninterested in theories about art, but preoccupied with the task of representing in terms of paint the beauty of the scenes before him. If an argument about art started in the camp, Streeton would make a jest of it, walking up and down and shouting: "Apples, Oranges and Lemonade." He joined with Roberts and myself in many a fierce bout with the old Art Society in the hope of widening its point of view, but he never lost his temper over them as many of us did. Indeed, it seemed to me that he never felt that theories about art, or the administration of art societies, really mattered. His nature was that of a fresh, breezy, care-free youth who revelled in the beauty of his country, and whose highest ambition was to paint it as faithfully as he could. His colour sense was not subtle, but he was warmly appreciative of the general features of Australian colouration, and by hard continuous training his hand answered readily to every suggestion of colour that he saw before him.

I often went out sketching with him, and no one was ever more completely absorbed, or more forgetful of the life around him, than Arthur Streeton when he sat down to place some beautiful scene upon his small canvas. Many times he fell upon lean days