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AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSIONIST THE CIGAR BOX LID TRADITION OF THE HEIDELBERG SCHOOL 

AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSIONISM - THE CIGAR BOX LID, or 9X5 TRADITION OF THE HEIDELBERG SCHOOL.  

The 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition took place on the 17 August 1889 at Buxton's Rooms on Swanston Street Melbourne featured works by Charles Conder, Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton of the “Heidelberg School”. The exhibition's name references the dimensions of most of the paintings—9 by 5 inches (23 cm × 13 cm), the size of the cigar box lids upon which many of the works were painted. The majority were painted over the autumn and winter of 1889, in the rural suburb of Heidelberg, where Streeton had established an artists' camp the previous year. I grew up in Heidelberg in Melbourne where, as young boy scout became very familiar wiith the scenery thereabouts. Many of the locations have in the meanwhile become suburbs of greater Melbourne. 

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