In Weighing the flee ce Lambert made an image of the successful
grazier. He also suggested the importance of wool to the
Australian economy and reflected on the good fortune of the
landowners of the 1920s. He located the figures artificially in
their environment as if they were in a tableau of modern life,
actors on a stage set. This pastoralist is not a poorly clad
labourer, as is the man in Lambert’s Across the black soil
plains of 1899 (cat.9); he is a well-tailored manager standing
on the edge of the scene, watching his employees at work and
looking at his impressive fleece. His wife sits on a wool-bale
passively beside him, a further symbol of his achievements. The
figures are Mr Leigh Sadleir Falkiner and his wife Beatrice,
depicted in a brick-walled woolshed on the Falkiners’ property
Wanganella Estate, near Deniliquin in the Riverina district of
New South Wales. They look at a fleece being weighed by
Falkiner’s nephew, John Robert Carse. The bookkeeper, holding a
notebook in his hand, was Philip Darby