Australian tonalism

He argued that painting was a pure science of optical analysis, and believed that a painter should aim to create an exact illusion of spatial depth by carefully observing in nature tone and tonal relationships (shades of light and dark) and spontaneously recording them in the order that they had been received by the eye.

Their subtle, "misty" depictions of Melbourne's beaches and parks, as well as its everyday, unadorned suburbia, show an interest in the interplay between softness and structure, nature and modernity.

[3] The minimum of means they used to distill the essence of their subjects has drawn comparisons to the haiku form of poetry, and the movement is regarded as a precursor to the late modernist style minimalism.

Dissatisfied with the academic teachings there, as well as the avant-garde, he instead taught himself and developed a unique theory of painting based on the importance of tonal values and objective optical analysis, what he termed the "Scientific Order of Impressions".

[7][8][9] They rejected the then-popular Heidelberg School tradition with its emphasis on colour and narrative, and attacked various forms of modern art which Meldrum considered to be ego-based and technically inferior.