ABSTRACT
Traditional British and European values and customs still commanded wide acceptance in the colony, but members of the younger generation were less inclined to treat them with exaggerated respect. In James Smith’s time as a new immigrant, colonial progress had been equated with the transplantation of ideas and the re-establishment of familiar institutions. In 1885, Roberts and McCubbin had set up camp at Box Hill, east of Melbourne, where, away from the city but with materials close to hand, they could paint directly from nature instead of making sketches for later finished compositions that they believed would lose the impact of first impression. Smith attributed the slow growth of colonial literature to the necessity for the laborious construction of a new society in which, for the first generation, there were few members of what he described as a ‘leisure class’.
