The Australian landscape painter Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton (1867-1943) was a leading member of the Heidelberg school, the Australian version of impressionism.

Arthur Streeton was born at Mount Duneed, Victoria, on April 8, 1867. He showed an early aptitude for sketching and, moving to Melbourne, became a lithographer's apprentice. While still in his teens he began studying at the National Gallery School.

When the painter Tom Roberts returned to Melbourne in 1885, the impressionist principles he brought back inspired a group of young artists. This became the Heidelberg school (named from the locale of the group's principal painting camp, overlooking the river Yarra, near Melbourne). Streeton joined the group in 1886 and was deeply influenced by impressionism. But he saw the need to stress high-key tonal values in order to translate into paint "the blue of the Australian skies and the clear transparency of Australian distances," and he struck out on a...