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Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Captain Charles Ulm
oil on canvas (frame: 133.5 cm x 108.8 cmdepth 7.8 cm, support: 114.0 cm x 89.0 cm)
Sir Charles Kingsford Smith MC AFC (1897–1935) and Captain Charles Ulm (1898-1934), aviators, together founded Australian National Airways in 1930. During World War I, Kingsford Smith had served on the ground in Gallipoli, Egypt and France before transferring to the Australian Flying Corps and later the Royal Flying Corps, as a member of which he was awarded the Military Cross. He worked in England, America and Australia as a stunt flyer and joy- flight pilot before forming his own aviation company in 1924. Charles Ulm, who at the age of sixteen had been amongst the first troops to land at Gallipoli, and who had later served on the Western Front, had returned to Sydney with a vision of establishing successful commercial airlines. He became Kingsford Smith’s business partner in 1927. That year they circumnavigated Australia in less than half the previous record time. In 1928, he and Kingsford Smith co-piloted the plane later known as Southern Cross across the Pacific from California to Brisbane. Later that year the pair made the first trans-Tasman flight from Sydney to Christchurch. Ulm made several more record-breaking flights, both with Kingsford Smith in Southern Cross, and in command of his own aircraft Faith in Australia. In 1934, Ulm went down in the sea between California and Hawaii in his Airspeed Envoy Stella Australis. His body was never found. Kingsford Smith had become world-famous by 1930, and in 1932 he was knighted for services to aviation, but in business he was almost back to where he started, selling joyflights at ten shillings a ride and establishing an ill-fated flying school. Nonetheless, his marvellous achievements continued until he, too, disappeared, probably near the coast of Burma, on an attempt at the Britain-Australia record.
One of seventeen portraits by Sir William Dargie acquired by 2013, the painting of the aviation heroes is also one of a mere handful of posthumous portraits in the Collection. In 2001 the Sydney Airports Corporation made a gift of the painting to the National Portrait Gallery along with two busts of Kingsford Smith and Ulm by Enid Fleming.
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The double portrait of Captain Charles Kingsford Smith and Captain Charles Ulm was painted by William Dargie in 1961 and measures 133.5 cm high by 108.8 cm wide.
The pair are presented against a brilliant blue sky with patches of white wispy cloud. Broad brushstrokes of light blue and pink give way to a greener bluish tint in the lower section of the background. The clouds descend into pale grey as the landscape blurs into the distance.
Bathed in sunlight, the men stand close together and are cropped at the hip. Captain Charles Ulm on our left, faces forward, half his body obscured by Sir Charles Kingsford Smith who stands in front, his body turned toward Ulm, side on.
Ulm’s direct gaze is forward to us. He has wavy brown hair cut shorter around his prominent ears and a warm rosy tanned complexion. The light from his right creates shadows on the left side of his clear broad forehead and delineates his straight nose, plump cheeks and double chin. His arched dark eyebrows, narrowed laughing eyes and parted lips open his cheery face into a wide smile.
Ulm wears a beige and green scarf wrapped around his neck and tucked into his aviator jump suit, unzipped to form a V. The one-piece suit is uniformly steely blue grey, a large pocket with a silver button and open upper flap is visible on his right chest. The baggy suit puckers at his waist and upper arm, which is bent at the elbow, and allows his right hand to rest on his hip. Cropped at the bottom edge of the painting, a brown strap is visible looped around the top of his index finger. Although Ulm's left arm is unseen, wrapped behind the figure of Kingsford Smith, the fingers and the thumb of that hand rest on Kingsford Smith's left shoulder.
Sir Charles Kingsford Smith looks out to the right of the portrait with a similarly tanned complexion to Ulm. His brown leather aviator helmet sits tight on his skull over his ears and clips together under his chin. His round glass goggles are raised above his eyes and held tight against his forehead. With his long oval face in three-quarter profile, a shadow plays on the left side of his face, accentuating his straight eyebrows, drooped eyelids and blue eyes. He has pronounced cheek bones and a long slightly hooked nose. He too is smiling with closed lips, with a slight curved crease around both corners of his mouth. Kingsford Smith wears a chocolate brown leather flying jacket, one side flaps open across his chest and is lined in a beige green sheepskin. At his waist his hands clasp a long slim white folded paper.
Audio description written and voiced by Annette Twyman, 2021
