{{short description|Painting by Tom Roberts}} {{Use Australian English|date=June 2020}} {{Use dmy dates|date=July 2019}} {{Infobox artwork | image_file=Tom Roberts - Wood Splitters, 1886 2.jpg | backcolor=#FBF5DF | image_size=300px | title=Charcoal burners | artist=Tom Roberts | year=1886 | medium=oil on canvas | height_metric=61.4 | width_metric= 92.3 | metric_unit=cm | imperial_unit=in | city=Ballarat | museum=Art Gallery of Ballarat }} '''''Charcoal burners''''' (previously known as '''''Wood splitters''''') is an 1886 painting by the Australian artist Tom Roberts.<ref name=AGB>{{cite web|title=Tom Roberts: Wood splitters|url=http://www.artgalleryofballarat.com.au/explore-and-experience/collection/australian-collection/roberts,-tom.aspx|work=Australian collection|publisher=Art Gallery of Ballarat|accessdate=17 September 2013|archive-date=14 December 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131214005420/http://www.artgalleryofballarat.com.au/explore-and-experience/collection/australian-collection/roberts,-tom.aspx|url-status=dead}}</ref> The painting depicts three rural labourers "splitting and stacking timber for the preparation of charcoal".<ref name=AGB /> Roberts, influenced by the Barbizon school and Jules Bastien-Lepage, would later return to the theme of rural men working in his works ''A break away!'' and ''Shearing the Rams''.<ref name=AGB />

Roberts painted the picture from sketches made at a camp he made with Frederick McCubbin at Box Hill, then a rural locality east of Melbourne.<ref name=AGB />

The painting was acquired by the Art Gallery of Ballarat in 1961.<ref name=AGB/>

The work was stolen from the gallery in 1978. A ransom was paid the following year for the safe recovery of the painting from a park in Sydney.<ref name="Cansdale">{{cite news |last1=Cansdale |first1=Dominic |title=How Wood Splitters art heist from Ballarat helped change regional art galleries forever |url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-22/how-ballarats-forgotten-art-heist-changed-regional-galleries/11418786 |access-date=1 June 2021 |work=ABC News |publisher=Australian Broadcasting Corporation |date=1 June 2021}}</ref>

==See also== * List of paintings by Tom Roberts

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links== *[http://www.artgalleryofballarat.com.au/exhibitions-and-events/collection/australian-collection/roberts,-tom.aspx ''Wood splitters''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160601092414/http://www.artgalleryofballarat.com.au/exhibitions-and-events/collection/australian-collection/roberts,-tom.aspx |date=1 June 2016 }} &ndash; Art Gallery of Ballarat

{{Tom Roberts}} {{Heidelberg School}}

Category:Paintings by Tom Roberts Category:1886 paintings Category:Collection of the Art Gallery of Ballarat Category:Stolen works of art Category:Genre paintings Category:Oil paintings on canvas Category:Paintings of men

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