Nicknamed "Bulldog" due to his tenacity and drive, Roberts was considered the primary force behind the Heidelberg School movement.

Settling in Collingwood, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, he worked as a photographer's assistant through the 1870s, while studying art at night under Swiss-born landscape painter Louis Buvelot and befriending others who were to become prominent artists, notably Frederick McCubbin.

[2] While in London and Paris, he took in the progressing influence of painters Jules Bastien-Lepage and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

[2] From 1884 and through to February 1892,[3] Roberts worked again in Victoria, and became a prominent member of the bohemian artists' society the Buonarotti Club, adopting its habit of dress with a red satin lined opera cape and a 'crush topper,' though also advocating that professional artists be put in charge of the Club's exhibition activities; so instituted a selection panel of Frederick McCubbin, Louis Abrahams, John Mather, Jane Sutherland and himself, who would select and hang the works and provide exhibitors with constructive feedback.

[4] In the summer of 1885–86, Roberts began establishing "artists' camps" on the outskirts of Melbourne for the purpose of capturing en plein air the rural life and native bushland of Australia, as well as its light, heat, space and distance.

The Box Hill railway station had been completed only a few years earlier, allowing for convenient access to the Australian bush.

They painted en plein air together, creating companion views of Coogee Beach, and discussed impressionist techniques, which Conder had also picked up from expatriate artist G. P. Nerli.

In doing so, the artists sought to capture the fleeting effects of nature in a spontaneous manner, and were intent on officially establishing themselves as "impressionists" and thus the vanguard of Australian art.

It proved to be a succès de scandale, attracting scorn from a number of art critics, who dismissed impressionism as a fad.

Today it is considered a landmark event in Australian art history, and the first independent exhibition of the Heidelberg School movement, named after the location of the aforementioned artists' camp.

Roberts would have known Australian-born artist and Slade School of Art Drawing teacher, Derwent Lees, both calling England and Australia home.

In this painting, as one modern reviewer has said, Roberts put his formal art training to work, translating "the classical statuary into the brawny workers of the shearing shed".

The younger Conder found these painting expeditions influential and decided to follow Roberts to Melbourne later that year to join him and Streeton at their artists' camp at Heidelberg.

[12] It is an early testament to Roberts' plein-air 'impressionist' technique, which brought out the sun's glare on the bright blue sea, bleached white sand, dry grass and spindly seaside vegetation.