Search / charles kingsford smith

Leah King-Smith

Born: 1957, Gympie, QLD
Works: Brisbane

Extraordinary airmen make aviation history

Charles is my wingman

Charles, 2015

Winner, DPA 2016

Ben Roberts-Smith, 2018

Commissioned in 2018 with funds raised through the 2020 project

Rod McNicol

Rod McNicol on photographing Jack Charles.

Icons Syndicate

Ron Mueck

Ron Mueck grew up in Melbourne and began a career in puppetry and special-effects based in the US and then London. In the mid-1990s Charles Saatchi commissioned four major works including Dead dad, which were exhibited in Saatchi’s exhibition ‘Sensation’ at the Royal Academy, London and which travelled to Berlin and Brooklyn.

Contributing artists

Find out more from each of the artists reinterpreting and reimagining elements of Australian history.

The Winner of the Digital Portraiture Award 2016 is...

The winner of the Digital Portraiture Award 2016 has been announced. Congratulations to Amiel Courtin-Wilson for his submission titled Charles.

2021 Annual Appeal

In 2021 the Annual Appeal was focussed on Peter Brew-Bevan's portraits of athletes Turia Pitt, Leisel Jones OAM and Ellie Cole OAM.

The Brougham

A philosopher-style of beard – thick and lengthy; a greyer, hence wiser version of the Burke; and suited to older men who saw themselves as sagacious or statesmanlike.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (1926–2022)

The National Portrait Gallery is deeply saddened by the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history. Throughout her 70-year reign, Her Majesty represented graciousness, humanity and stability during times of enormous social change.

The Lambert

Barbering manuals of the turn of the century might describe this style as a ‘Van Dyck’, named after the Dutch painter Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) who is known to have adopted this look.

Literary lovers’ life liaison

Desire drives forbidden love

Arts Project Australia

Arts Project Australia is a creative social enterprise based in Naarm/Melbourne that supports neurodiverse artists, promoting their work and advocating for inclusion within contemporary arts practice.

New Australians bring creative wealth

Melbourne’s iconic culture-shapers

Inside Heide’s lives

Happiness to heartache

Beadles, bellmen and bumbles

For Dempsey’s people their occasional encounters with state power would have been largely through the local parish, which administered the ‘Old Poor Law’.

2012-13 Acquisition Fund

The Circle of Friends Acquisition Fund for 2012 was dedicated to purchasing a portrait of David Malouf by Rick Amor.

In the most correct style

Desirable outcomes, undesirable origins

Friendship’s rhyme and reason

Poetic trio

Donors

Annual Appeal

The 1850s to the 1880s

The restrained and cultivated facial hair fashions evident through the first decades of the 1800s were on the wane by the middle of the century, when hirsute faces became mainstream.

Rod McNicol

Australian photographer Rod McNicol has consistently analysed the passing of time through the evidence of the photographic portrait. At once confronting and tender, McNicol’s portrait photographs are bold and intimate.

Portrait Donors

National Portrait Gallery unveils twenty new portrait commissions to celebrate twenty years

The National Portrait Gallery has unveiled twenty new portrait commissions of Australian leaders and individualists as part of its twentieth birthday celebrations in a new exhibition, 20/20: Celebrating twenty years with twenty new portrait commissions.

Finalists announced for National Photographic Portrait Prize

The National Portrait Gallery would like to congratulate the forty finalists for the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2019.

Rare Set of Watercolour Paintings on Display for the First Time

A rare and enchanting collection of 52 portraits of British street people will be on display for the first time in the National Portrait Gallery’s winter show, Dempsey’s People: a folio of British street portraits 1824-1844.

Allow me to introduce...

These full-length figures in watercolour, gouache and pencil date mostly from the 1820s, and almost all come from the collection of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart.

2015-17 Acquisition Fund

From 2015 to 2017 the Acquisition Fund was focussed on Reg Richardson AM by Mitch Cairns, a finalist in the Archibald Prize 2014, and a great example of minimalist portraiture.

L. Gordon Darling AC CMG

The Chairman, Board, Director and all the Staff of the National Portrait Gallery mourn the loss of our Founding Patron, who died peacefully in Melbourne this morning. He was 94.

Australian Love Stories

A major new exhibition celebrating love in all its guises. Opening 20 March 2021.

Harriet Schwarzrock: spaces between movement and stillness

To celebrate the new exhibition Australian Love Stories, renowned Australian glass artist Harriet Schwarzrock has been commissioned to make a large-scale installation reflecting on the role the heart plays as our emotional centre.

NPPP 2009 exhibition essay

Dr Christopher Chapman, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2009 Prize.

Anthony Anderton

An interview with the photographer.

The National Portrait Prizes

The National Portrait Gallery today announced finalists for the inaugural Darling Portrait Prize, a national new $75,000 prize for Australian portrait painting, and released selected images from the final prize pool for the popular National Photography Portrait Prize.

Janet Dawson

When soulmates Janet Dawson and Michael Boddy moved from Sydney to a property, Boddy was clear about why: ‘Our marriage is one long conversation - we moved to the bush so we could talk to each other without so many interruptions.’

Uncommon Australians

Sarah Engledow writes about Gordon and Marilyn Darling and their support for the National Portrait Gallery throughout its evolution.

So Fine

The National Portrait Gallery is pleased to announce its winter exhibition is So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history. It will open to the public from 29 June 2018.

Announcing... Ralph Heimans: Portraiture. Power. Influence.

In March 2024, the National Portrait Gallery will launch a major exhibition of the work of Ralph Heimans AM, the Australian artist who’s painted some of the world’s most recognisable people.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2023

We encourage you to look, to feel, to think, to question and most importantly, to identify and connect.

So Fine

Ten women artists explore the possibilities of portraiture as a contemporary art form; and reinterpret and reimagine Australian history in the Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history.

The 2023 National Photographic Portrait Prize

Shea Kirk’s portrait of friend and fellow-artist Emma Armstrong-Porter has won the 2023 National Photographic Portrait Prize.

2023 Annual Appeal

In 2023 the Annual Appeal was focussed on a work by one of Australia's best loved and most successful portrait painters, Judy Cassab AO CBE, depicting model, entrepreneur and deportment icon, June Dally-Watkins OAM.

Some prime ministers

Sarah Engledow explores the history of the prime ministers and artists featured in the exhibition.

Less than six degrees of separation

Dr Anne Sanders NPG Curatorial Researcher investigated the lives of the pioneering psychologists whose portraits are featured in Inner Worlds.

Announcing Shakespeare to Winehouse

More than eighty treasures from the National Portrait Gallery London will travel to Canberra for a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from March 2022.

Arianne McNaught

An interview with the photographer.

Kristin Headlam

Basil grew into a speckled beauty – a long-legged leaper and an exceptionally vocal dog, with a great register of sounds, ascending in shock value from a whimper to a growl to a bark to a yelp that’s a violation of the ears.

The more things change...

Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2017 Prize.

Everybody, look serious

Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2014 Prize.

NPPP 2016 exhibition essay

Penny Grist, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2016 Prize.

The art of Inner Worlds

Dr Christopher Chapman NPG Curator of Inner Worlds explains the development of an exhibition that spans from Surrealism to contemporary art.

History

How the National Portrait Gallery and its unique collection came to be

Nicholas Harding

Over the years the young Nicholas Harding got his hands on various mice and guinea pigs, but they served mainly to illustrate the concept of mortality. 

The Bare story

Curator, Penny Grist, reveals how this exhibition came to be

Rick Amor: 21 Portraits

Sarah Engledow chronicles Rick Amor's work and accomplishments in this extensive essay in conjunction with the exhibition Rick Amor: 21 Portraits.