---
node: au_shearing_the_rams
type: art
slug: shearing_the_rams
title: "Shearing the Rams"
lead: "Tom Roberts's 1890 painting of shearers at work in a woolshed, a landmark of Australian art."
published: 2026-07-15
updated: 2026-07-15
image_file: shearing_the_rams.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tom_Roberts_-_Shearing_the_rams_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg"
image_author: "Tom Roberts"
image_license: "Public domain"
---

## Overview

Shearing the Rams is an oil painting completed in 1890 by Tom Roberts, a leading figure of Australian Impressionism (the Heidelberg School). He visited a woolshed in Victoria and sketched the workers there.

## Description

In the dim shed, sturdy shearers bend silently to their sheep. The light falling through the space and the texture of sweated labour are rendered realistically yet with real poetry.

## History and legacy

The work celebrates the labour and life of an Australia built on the wool industry and became a national painting. It is today held by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.