The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.
Irish portraitist Reginald Gray painted many celebrated subjects including Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon, Helena Bonham Carter, Juliette Binoche, Yves Saint Laurent and the Prince of Brunei. He began this portrait soon after he met the Australian writer and critic Jill Neville (1932–1997) in Paris in 1967. They lost touch before it was completed, and he finished the canvas as a tribute to Neville when he heard the news of her death 30 years later.
Neville left Sydney for London in the early 1950s, initially living on a Chelsea houseboat. When her brother Richard Neville arrived in London, she introduced him to people who helped launch the English incarnation of his magazine Oz, the first issues of which were published from her Bayswater home. In 1966 she published her first novel, Fall-Girl, which drew on her tumultuous relationships with the poets Peter Porter and Robert Lowell. Moving to Paris the following year, she went on to write six more novels, the last three of which explored the experience of individuals torn between Europe and Australia. Through the 1980s and early 1990s she was a regular reviewer for the Independent, the Times Literary Supplement, the Observer, London Magazine and the Australian.
Gift of the artist 2002
© Reginald Gray
Reginald Gray (1 portrait)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Well behaved women seldom make history, as the saying goes, and the National Portrait Gallery, consequently, is full of awesome Australian women who refused to conform to narrow ideas about their place and their worth.
Eye to Eye is a summer Portrait Gallery Collection remix arranged by degree of eye contact – from turned away with eyes closed all the way through to right-back-at-you – as we explore artists’ and subjects’ choices around the direction of the gaze.
The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.
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The National Portrait Gallery respects the artistic and intellectual property rights of others. The use of images of works of art reproduced on this website and all other content may be restricted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Requests for a reproduction of a work of art or other content can be made through a Reproduction request. For further information please contact NPG Copyright.
The National Portrait Gallery is an Australian Government Agency