page_title: The Big Picture (painting)
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: The Big Picture (painting) / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Tom Roberts working on The Big Picture, his epic painting of the opening of the first parliament of Australia, at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne.
context_page_description: The Opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia by H.R.H. The Duke of Cornwall and York, May 9, 1901, more commonly known in Australia as The Big Picture, is a 1903 painting by the Australian artist Tom Roberts. The painting, measuring 304.5 by 509.2 centimetres, or roughly 10 by 17 feet, depicts the opening of the first Parliament of Australia at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne on 9 May 1901.
  The painting is part of the Royal Collection but has been on permanent loan to the Parliament of Australia since 1957. The work, currently on display in Parliament House, Canberra, has been described as "undoubtedly the principal work of art recording Australia's Parliamentary History."
context_section_description: The effort of creating such a monumental picture—Roberts nicknamed it "The Big Picture"—took its toll on the artist. Nicknamed "Bulldog", he drew a picture of a bulldog escaping a collar and chain in a letter he wrote informing that the picture was near completion. He described the painting once as his "Frankenstein of 17 feet." Roberts's eyesight was weakened by the strain in representing so many likenesses accurately and the importance that he placed on the task sapped his strength. The biographer Humphrey McQueen claims the picture gave Roberts "an inflated idea of [his] own importance".
  [P]oliticians called at his studio to pose for their portraits, royalty dropped in, and he became personal friends with Deakin. He thought fame and more commissions would now come his way in England.
  — Humphrey McQueen, 
   However, Roberts never established himself as an artist in England and slipped into depression. The completion of the painting is generally seen as a turning point in his artistic career, after which his work never again reached the same heights. Roberts family reject this consensus as a "myth", with his great-granddaughter, artist Lisa Roberts, stating "His son, my grandfather, Caleb, documented that for a year he was depressed which isn't surprising after a huge commission like that that took him away from the thing he loved most which was the landscape. But after that, he went back to it. He continued to paint but not with the desire to be rich and famous."
  The work itself was considered a worthy record of the event but not a masterpiece. It has, however, become the best known pictorial record of the historic occasion, and a national icon.  The cartoonist Bill Leak's homage, The big picture.... with apologies to Tom Roberts, won the 1997 Walkley Award for best artwork. Robert Hannaford was commissioned to create a companion piece to celebrate the centenary of Federation in 2001.
caption: Roberts working on the painting at the Royal Exhibition Building
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