Portrait of Tam Purves, 1958

Thomas ‘Tam’ Purves (1909–1969), founded the Australian Galleries in Collingwood, Melbourne with his wife Anne in 1956. Purves began his career as a manufacturer’s agent, and spent eighteen years running a successful dress-pattern manufacturing business with his wife. He managed the business aspects of the Australian Galleries, while Anne dealt with the art. As a team, they pioneered professional dealing in Australian contemporary art, promoting the careers of artists including Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Albert Tucker, Jeffrey Smart and Brett Whiteley. John Brack began exhibiting with them in 1957. The following year he painted their portraits – as well as one of his friend, Fred Williams, which is now in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Perpetuated by the Purves’s son Stuart, Australian Galleries recently celebrated its fifty-fifth year, sealing its reputation as Australia’s longest-surviving commercial art business.

About ten per cent of John Brack’s works were portraits; none of them was flattering. The artist’s widow, Helen Brack, has written of this one ‘here is an essay about a businessman, and John makes no concessions’. The work was exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery exhibition Portraits by John Brack in 2007, and in the National Gallery of Victoria’s huge show, John Brack, in 2009.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2012
© Helen Brack