Notebook - Frederick McCubbin, Lost

Soft cover with blank pages
Approximately 60 pages
Dimensions: 21 x 15cm

Frederick McCubbin is said to have been inspired to paint Lost by the case of Clara Crosbie: a young girl who was miraculously found alive in dense bush after having gone missing for three weeks in May 1885. During 1885 and 1886, McCubbin and Tom Roberts pitched their tents at Box Hill, among tall blue-gum saplings, ti-tree and wild grasses. They depicted treescapes in which the sky is absent, viewing the eucalypts in close focus and using soft colours and low tonalities to capture the distinctive texture of slender saplings, grasses and twigs. These techniques, all of which are visible in this work, emphasise the density of the bush, in which it is easy to become lost.

Frederick McCUBBIN
Lost, 1886
oil on canvas
115.8 x 73.9 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1940