Academy in 1910 with two portraits, Madame Hartl 1909–10 and April girl (Miss Nettie Hollander) 1909. But Roberts did not think of himself primarily as one kind of painter or another; he was an artist who created a great many portraits among other work. Literary critic and editor AG Stevens, writing as Titian Redde in The Bookfellow on 29 April 1899, commented that Roberts had ‘an instinct of accuracy which makes good likenesses, and an instinct of art which makes charming likenesses. The distinction may come from a turn of the chin [as in An Australian native 1888 and Lily Stirling c 1890], or the softening of bright eyes and cheeks under a gossamer veil [as in Eileen 1892], or from a bare hand holding a glove, or a cunning bit of colour in the hat [as in A French hat 1900] …’ Roberts painted many profile portraits, including the head and shoulder portraits of
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his friends Alexander Anderson, SW Pring, Smike (Arthur) Streeton, Miss Isobel McDonald and Florence Greaves. In a manuscript to his son Caleb, quoted in Croll’s 1935 book, Roberts recounts his photographer friend H Walter Barnett’s suggestion that the left side of the face was most often ‘the likeness’ side. Roberts agreed with the observation, as many of his profile portraits show. He was possibly working under the influence of contemporaries such as James McNeill Whistler, Carolus-Duran, Edouard Manet and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He could also have been expressing admiration for the works of the great portrait painters of the past, such as Alesso Baldovinetti’s early Renaissance profile Portrait of a lady c 1465, which he could have viewed at the National Gallery, London, and other Renaissance profile portraits seen during his travels in Italy. He may also have been
influenced by Diego Velásquez and his profile portraits such as A woman as a Sybil (Dama, Juana Pacheco) 1632 in the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid and The water seller of Seville c 1620 in the Wellington Collection of Apsley House in London. Roberts’s diverse range of striking portraits include Miss Minna Simpson 1886, Madame Pfund c 1887, Mrs L Abrahams 1888 and Elizabeth and Carmen Pinschof 1900. He had the ambition, moreover, to create a medley of famous people in his series of panel portraits Familiar faces and figures 1896–99. Roberts was also unique among his close associates in sympathetically depicting Indigenous Australian people such as Aboriginal head, Charlie Turner c 1892 and Aboriginal woman (Mariah, Yulgilbar) 1895. He was the only one among his intimate colleagues to have such an interest. In his portrait of Charlie Turner,