AustLit

'Arthur Streeton had many reasons to look back on his first decade as an artist with particular nostalgia. While living first in Melbourne and then Sydney, before sailing for England in 1897, Streeton painted such great pictures as Golden Summer, Eaglemont and Fire’s On. He enjoyed intense camaraderie with other artists – especially Tom Roberts, Fred McCubbin and Charles Conder – which he never found again. He “had quite a little in the way of love affairs”, as he boasted to Roberts, though his familiarity with Conder’s experience of venereal disease and “painful recollection of his suffering” left him wary of sex. He prided himself on how, by sending a letter of protest to the press, he played a pivotal role in stopping a coalmine under Sydney Harbour.' (Introduction)