Melbourne/Victoria coverage. Sources checked 22 October 2026.

A painting held in Melbourne need not depict Melbourne, and its making need not belong to one place. Tom Roberts’s Shearing the rams is a useful example for readers preparing a local art-history note: the NGV record connects the work with Corowa in New South Wales and with Melbourne. Keeping those connections separate produces a clearer account than labelling every collection object a Melbourne scene.

Three location questions

The NGV collection record dates the painting to 1890 and lists places of execution as Corowa, New South Wales, and Melbourne, Victoria. Its account places preliminary studies at Brocklesby Station near Corowa in late spring 1888, describes return visits, and records a completed-work exhibition in a Collins Street studio. The record identifies the work through accession number 4654-3.

Those statements answer different questions: where the subject was studied, where the work was made, and where it was presented. The collection’s present institutional home is a fourth relationship. A short caption can include all the relevant connections without implying that the sheep-shearing scene occurred in central Melbourne.

Build a location-aware caption

For a hypothetical school presentation, place the work’s title and artist first, then its recorded year. Add one sentence explaining the Corowa and Melbourne making locations. Place the institutional credit on a separate line. This makes the caption usable even when the picture appears outside a Melbourne-focused chapter.

A map could show the two named places as separate reference points, but it should not invent the artist’s precise journey between them. A line drawn across a map may look like a documented route even when it merely connects two labels. If a route is relevant, it needs a source that actually describes the travel. Otherwise, two markers communicate the geography more honestly.

A realistic image is still a constructed artwork

The gallery offers an interpretation of the painting’s realism and national identity. Attribute that interpretation to the gallery rather than turning it into the artist’s unrecorded statement. A viewer can discuss how the image represents work, place or identity while acknowledging that an artwork is not a comprehensive record of every person and condition in a shearing shed.

For an independent classroom discussion, compare the questions the painting invites with the questions a historical workplace record would need to answer. What does the title identify? What does the collection entry establish about making? What evidence would be necessary for an assertion about wages, working hours or the experience of every worker? This discussion is a proposed reading activity, not an investigation undertaken here.

Use the collection entry without promising a visit outcome

A gallery-location field helps readers find the institution’s current information, but it does not guarantee that a particular work will remain on view on a future date. A visitor planning around this painting should check NGV’s current display information. Likewise, online access to a reproduction is distinct from permission to reuse it in a publication.

The strongest Melbourne connection is specific: the record includes Melbourne in the work’s execution and presentation history, and NGV holds the painting. Preserving the New South Wales relationship enriches that local story. It lets readers understand Melbourne as part of an artistic network rather than incorrectly moving every depicted event into the city.

Sources and scope: NGV collection record. Checked 22 October 2026. Institutional records and editorial research methods are distinguished above. No in-person inspection, current display, admission or event booking is claimed.

Related Melbourne reading: Lifestyle coverage.