THE most famous artwork to have emerged in the Riverina will be the subject of a big celebration at Corowa later this year.
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Shearing the Rams, a painting by Tom Roberts, has its 130th anniversary in 2020.
The work was composed by Melbourne-based Roberts during a visit to a Brocklesby station, north of Corowa, in 1888 before being completed in his studio.
Corowa Historical Society will celebrate Shearing the Rams across the NSW Labour Day weekend in October.
Member Lesley New said many of those who visited Corowa's Federation museum did not realise the painting's background.
"Most people know the painting but not everyone knows it was painted in a shed outside Corowa so we wanted to show the affinity it has with the region," Mrs New said.
It was originally planned to mark the occasion with a talk from art historian Andrew Mackenzie, but Mrs New said there would now be more activities.
"We thought it's 130 years old and we'll do something significant and so rather just have a speaker, we'll have a blade shearing demonstration and spinning and weaving demonstrations in Sanger Street," Mrs New said.
"The golf club is having a Tom Roberts Shearing the Rams Classic golf day."
The society promoted the weekend with a float in last month's Federation Festival parade featuring members and their grandchildren depicting the painting's figures.
Mrs New said it would be the first wide-scale celebration of the painting held at Corowa, with the only the other commemoration she was aware of in the town a re-enactment of the painting as part of the Bicentenary in 1988.
She said it was hoped an event could be staged at Killeneen, the outstation where Shearing the Rams was devised.
Sadly though the shearing shed was burnt down in 1965.
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Late Corowa resident Dorothy Ambrose, whose grandmother Susan Bourne was the tar boy in the painting, in 2015 told The Canberra Times it was razed.
"Its foundations were undermined by rabbits so it was torched in the 1960s," Mrs Ambrose said.
Shearing the Rams came to symbolise Australia's rural heritage.
Weekly magazine Table Talk declared in 1890 that "Shearing the Rams is a work by which Mr. Roberts name will always be remembered".
It was owned by a stock and station agent before the National Gallery of Victoria purchased it in 1932.
Asked if the society considered having the painting at Corowa for the gala, Mrs New said she did not think it was possible given conditions required for display.