Bailed Up

Tom Roberts's 'Bailed Up' (1895, reworked 1927) records a real bushranger hold-up on a New South Wales stage-coach road, the riders calmly relieving passengers at gunpoint in the soft afternoon light. Combining reportage with Impressionist plein-air landscape, it is the defining history painting of 19th-century Australia and hangs at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.