Distinctly Australian in character, the painting is a celebration of pastoral life and work, especially "strong, masculine labour", and recognises the role that the wool industry played in the development of the country.

[1][2] It forms part of the National Gallery of Victoria's Australian art collection, held at the Ian Potter Centre in Federation Square, Melbourne.

Roberts modelled his painting on a shearing shed at what is now called Killeneen, an outstation of the 24,000-hectare (59,000-acre) Brocklesby sheep station, near Corowa in the Riverina region of New South Wales.

[5] Roberts' work was noted by the local press with reports of him "dressed in blue shirt and moleskins ... giving the last finishing touches to a picture in oils about 5ft by 4ft.

[4] In 2003 however, art critic and historian Paul Johnson wrote: "Tom Roberts spent two years, on the spot, painting Shearing the Rams".

[4] In 2006, The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) conducted a scientific examination of paint left on a piece of timber salvaged from the now-destroyed shed, where it was thought that Roberts cleaned his brushes.

[8] The young man carrying the fleece on the left of the painting alludes to the figure of Esau in Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise at the Florence Baptistery.

[4] The white and pink striped shirt of the central shearer carries the highest tonal point of the composition, and is identical to that of Will Maloney's in an 1887 portrait by John Russell, a close friend of Roberts who spent most of his career in France.

While touring Europe with Australian artist John Peter Russell, Roberts adopted the principles of impressionism and plein air painting and brought them back with him to Australia when he returned in 1885.

[11] With like-minded artists, he helped to form the "Heidelberg School" movement, a group of Melbourne-based impressionists who depicted rural life and the bush, with nationalist and regionalist overtones.

[5] Historian Geoffrey Blainey states that shearers of that era, like Jackie Howe, were seen almost as "folk heroes" with shearing tallies reported in local newspapers in a similar manner to sports scores.

The sun of the full Australian springtide streams through the broad low windows, and through the end door there is a glimpse of the open bush all aglow.

[13] Art historian Chris Mcauliffe echoed this interpretation, calling the shearers "perfect specimens of manhood" who, in Roberts' vision, represented "the so-called 'coming man' of Australia".

[23] The "self-consciously nationalist" image of young white men has been appropriated by other artists on behalf of several excluded groups, including women and immigrants.

"[24] The photorealist painter Marcus Beilby won the 1987 Sir John Sulman Prize with a painting that also depicts shearers at work, this time in a modern shed using machine shears with overhead gear.