Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
The pain was unbearable; Louis’ tormented mind couldn’t be relieved of the certainty that he was a failure, that the business would go broke, and he would let everyone down. He felt so many depended on him, his dear wife Golda, his four children, and the great friends he had shared so many hopes and dreams with; the unfulfilled wish to become the artist he wanted to be, and the pressure from the family to put all his efforts into the family cigar & cigarette factory, especially when he heard the rumour that the other company in Melbourne was going to bring his business down by circulating information that Snider & Abrahams products were laced with opium.
They had met at the National Gallery School; Louis was there in 1871-2 and again in 1879-84. All shared a vocation too powerful to ignore. They would go on to break new ground artistically and launch Australia’s impressionist era, influencing many artists to come. Louis Abrahams was a dapper dresser, hence his title ‘The Don’. Fred McCubbin tended to philosophise, and was known as ‘The Prof’. Tom Roberts was nicknamed ‘Bulldog’ because of his tenacious personality, he often drew himself as a bulldog. Arthur Streeton was known as ‘Smike’ after a Dickens character in Nicholas Nickelby, who shared Streeton’s slight physique. Their friendship extended beyond the classroom, they started painting outdoors and sharing meals where they read their favourite poems and literary extracts, camping out to paint in the Box Hill bush, or setting up easels at the beach at Mentone, or the countryside outside Geelong. Louis was expected to work in the family business, so he couldn’t work on his painting as much as he’d like and saw the others improve and extend themselves. He couldn’t match their talent but he could at least support them by supplying canvases and materials when they couldn’t afford to buy them, and he could buy paintings from them. He sat for hours as artists’ model, enjoying the time and the mateship. As their recognition grew, Louis was left behind, the nameless figure represented in paintings such as McCubbin’s prophetically titled ‘Down on his Luck’.