"Charles Conder was one of the youngest, most original and most talented members of the Heidelberg School of impressionist painters, and one of the few to achieve a lasting reputation outside Australia. His work is in many major collections, including the Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum in New York." "Conder painted the Hawkesbury region and Sydney's beaches, including Coogee with Tom Roberts - who invited him to Melbourne. There he joined the artists' camps at Box Hill and Heidelberg, painted urban and bayside scenes and was a major instigator of the famous '9 x 5' Exhibition in 1889. As in Sydney, his carefree charm and delicate, witty paintings endeared him to literary and artistic circles." "Paris beckoned early, and he soon fell in with the fin de siecle generation led by Oscar Wilde, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Aubrey Beardsley. He embraced Bohemia, was forever in debt, worked erratically but inceasingly and lived as if there were no tomorrow." "Although Conder was rescued from poverty by marriage to a wealthy Canadian widow, his bohemian past eventually called in its account. Tragically. he descended into syphilitic madness and died in his fortieth year." This is a biography of a gifted artist whose personal style and unconventional life will appeal to another fin de siecle generation of readers.