Search / charles roberts

Who is Lillie Roberts?

Talented wife for a talented husband

Charles, 2015

Winner, DPA 2016

Ben Roberts-Smith, 2018

Commissioned in 2018 with funds raised through the 2020 project

Extraordinary airmen make aviation history

Charles is my wingman

Yang Na

Born 1983, Chongqing, Sichuan Province. Lives and works in Beijing.

Rod McNicol

Rod McNicol on photographing Jack Charles.

Liu Wei

Born 1965 in Beijing. Lives and works in Beijing.

2013-14 Acquisition Fund

This 1910 portrait of Elizabeth Sarah (Lillie) Roberts by Tom Roberts was brought into the Gallery's collection with the assistance of the Acquisition Fund in 2013.

Rong Rong

Born Li Zhirong 1968, Zhangzhou, Fujian Province. Lives and works in Beijing.

Fang Lijun

Born 1963, Handan, Hebei Province China. Lives and works in Beijing.

About the exhibition

Portraits from the Sigg collection, from 1979 to the present including painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation.

Zhang Xiaogang

Born 1958, Kunming, Yunnan Province. Lives and works in Beijing.

Grow the Portrait Gallery of Australia

The Portrait Gallery is calling for contributions to support in the acquisition of superb portraits for the national collection.

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.

Yu Hong

Born 1966 in Beijing, China. Lives and works in Beijing.

Chinese Art

A short overview of modern Chinese art from 1949 to the present.

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.

References

About the exhibition curator Claire Roberts, and writers Eugene Wang and Zhang Letian.

The Cosmopolitans

Spanning the 1880s to the 1930s, this collection display celebrates the innovations in art – and life – introduced by the generation of Australians who travelled to London and Paris for experience and inspiration in the decades either side of 1900.

Australian Love Stories

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

Icons and Identities

It’s often thought that foremost among portraiture’s many functions is the documentation of individuals who are celebrated and familiar, or who best exemplify the temper and identity of a certain place at a certain time.

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.

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

New Australians bring creative wealth

Melbourne’s iconic culture-shapers

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’.

In the most correct style

Desirable outcomes, undesirable origins

Friendship’s rhyme and reason

Poetic trio

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.

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.

Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture

Exhibited simultaneously at the two locations, Go Figure! is drawn from the Sigg Collection, the largest and most significant collection of contemporary Chinese art anywhere in the world.

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.

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.

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.

Portrait Donors

Annual Appeal

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.’

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.

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.

History

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

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.

Arcadia: Sound of the sea

One night in the spring of 1970 in an old house in Whale Beach, north of Sydney, John Witzig, Albe Falzon and David Elfick put together the first issue of Tracks, playing Neil Young’s album Harvest over and over again as they pasted up galleys of type.

Arianne McNaught

An interview with the photographer.

Uncommon Australians

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

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.

Everybody, look serious

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

Some prime ministers

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

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 more things change...

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

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.