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Observation point

While visiting the National Portrait Gallery I noticed the absence of paintings of journalists.

The spirit of the gift

Former NPG Director, Andrew Sayers celebrates the support given to the Gallery by Gordon and Marilyn Darling.

Lear unbuttoned

Sarah Engledow steps up to the footlights and applauds the storyline behind Nicholas Harding's portraits of actor John Bell.

Barak, respected elder

Dr Christopher Chapman looks at the life of Wurundjeri elder William Barak through the portrait painted by Victor de Pury in 1899.

Ready , set... shoot

The exhibition Flash: Australian Athletes in Focus offers various interpretations of sporting men and women by five Australian photographers.

Pre-Raphaelite Profile

In 2006 the National Portrait Gallery acquired a splendid portrait of Victoria's first governor, Lieutenant Governor Charles Joseph La Trobe by Thomas Woolner.

All you can eat

In February 2003 the National Portrait Gallery Circle of Friends brought Sir Robert Strong to Australia to present a series of lectures entitled The Artists & The Banquet- A History of Dining, which focused on the links between gardens and table decoration from the Renaissance to the Victorian Era.

A gift from the heart

Lauren Dalla examines the life of Basil Bressler, the art patron responsible for one of the NPG's most important bequests.

Little women

Joanna Gilmour looks beyond the ivory face of select portrait miniatures to reveal their sitters’ true grit.

Nobel and his prize

To complement the exhibition Australians and the Nobel Prize, Jennifer Gason gives us a sense of the proceedings that occur during the award ceremony.

Tribute

Bob Ellis (1942–2016) was a journalist, columnist, screenwriter, film director, playwright, speechwriter and critic.

A new perspective

An exhibition devoted to Hans Holbein's English commissions shows the portraitist bringing across the Channel new technical developments in art - with a dazzling facility.

The fat of the land

Sir Sidney Kidman (1857-1935) is inscribed in Australian legend as the ‘Cattle King’. 

Touchy touchy

Tony Curran ponders whether our phones can change the course of painting.

In the thick of it

Projecting the splendour of the empire, and the resolve of its subjects, the bust of William Birdwood keeps a stiff upper lip in the National Portrait Gallery.

Cook in context

Robert Oatley's continuing benefaction has helped the National Portrait Gallery acquire works that add another layer to the story of Captain Cook.

Big shots

Djon Mundine OAM brings poignant memory and context to Martin van der Wal’s 1986 portrait photographs of storied Aboriginal artists.

Expect the unexpected

Joanna Gilmour revels in accidental artist Charles Rodius’ nineteenth century renderings of Indigenous peoples.

Form and reality

A photographic portrait by Kerry Dundas captures the contemplative mind of visionary painter Godfrey Miller.

The Obama effect

Kim Sajet reflects on two portraits with a power that extends beyond gallery walls.

The artist, the scholar and the gentleman

Kwon Hyeeun introduces Korean portraits of Kang Sehwang, and five generations of the Kang family.

Mother’s muse

Inga Walton traces the poignant path of photographer Polixeni Papapetrou, revealed in the NGV’s summer retrospective.

The God-shaped hole

Exploring the photographs of Martin Schoeller, Michael Desmond delves into the uneasy pact that exists between celebrity and the camera.

Prima facie

Sarah Engledow casts a judicious eye over portraits in the Victorian Bar’s Peter O’Callaghan QC Portrait Gallery.

In bloom

Susi Muddiman delights in Michael Zavros’ stunning portrait of the honourable Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO.

Giving and getting

The exhibition Portraits for Posterity celebrates gifts to the Gallery, of purchases made with donated funds, and testifies to the generosity and community spirit of Australians.

Poets' Portraits

The Portrait Gallery's paintings of two poets, Les Murray and Peter Porter, demonstrate two very different artists' responses to the challenge of representing more than usually sensitive and imaginative men.

Icons and imagery

Alison Weir explores the National Portrait Gallery, London and the BP Portrait Award to find what makes a good painted portrait - past and present.

The Lawrence lustre

Angus Trumble salutes the glorious portraiture of Sir Thomas Lawrence.

The Stories Beneath

The incomparable Beaton

To accompany the exhibition Cecil Beaton: Portraits, held at the NPG in 2005, this article is drawn from Hugo Vickers's authorised biography, Cecil Beaton (1985).

Risky business

John Zubrzycki lauds the characters of the Australian escapology trade.

Of beef in burgundy

Angus Trumble reveals the complex technical mastery behind a striking recent acquisition, Henry Bone’s enamel portrait of William Manning.

The animating signature

Joanna Gilmore delights in the affecting drawings of Mathew Lynn.

In the round

Andrew Sayers outlines the highlights of the National Portrait Gallery's display of portrait sculpture.

Four from the 30s

Australia's tradition of sculpted portraits stretches back to the early decades of the nineteenth century and continues to sustain a group of dedicated sculptors.

Poet of the Fleeting Moment

Mark Strizic's work crosses a broad spectrum of photographic fields including urban, industrial, commercial, and architectural photography. 

First encounters

Representations of the inhabitants of the new world expose the complexities of the colonisers' intentions.

Through blue eyes

Works by Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan bring the desert, the misty seashore and the hot Monaro plains to exhibition Open Air: Portraits in the landscape.

Apollo's breath

Christopher Chapman delights in the intimacy of Robert Mapplethorpe's photography

Mugshots

A toast to the acquisition of an unconventional new portrait of former Prime Minister, Stanley Melbourne Bruce.

The importance of being bearded

Joanna Gilmour discovers that the beards of the ill-fated explorers Burke and Wills were as epic as their expedition to traverse Australia from south to north.

Where the wild things are

Michael Desmond explores the complex portrait of Dr Bob Brown by Harold 'The Kangaroo' Thornton.

Everybody's heard about the bird

Two professionals; Australian surfer Layne Beachley and photographer Petrina Hicks, combine their strengths to achieve a remarkable portrait.

Donated duo

Dr Sarah Engledow writes about the gift of two striking paintings by the Australian artist Ken Done AM.

You beauty

Joanna Gilmour explores the fact and fictions surrounding the legendary life of Irish-born dancer Lola Montez.

In a good paddock

Celebrating a new painted portrait of Joseph Banks, Sarah Engledow spins a yarn of the naturalist, the first kangaroo in France and Don, a Spanish ram.

Enigma

Grace Carroll contemplates the curious case of Christian Waller.

Sea legged frogs

Joanna Gilmour describes some of the stories of the individuals and incidents that define French exploration of Australia and the Pacific.

No Laughing Matter

The biographical exhibition of Barry Humphries was the first display of its kind at the National Portrait Gallery.

More cash than dash

Joanna Gilmour describes how colonial portraitists found the perfect market among social status seeking Sydneysiders.

Love in the extreme

Joanna Gilmour reveals love’s more intense manifestations in the tale of Lord Kenelm and Venetia Digby.

Hyperversity

Dr Sarah Engledow writes about the larger-than-life Australian performance artist, Leigh Bowery.

Oz and beyond

Martin Sharp fulfils the Pop art idiom of merging art and life.

Cool cool world

Penelope Grist unpacks photographs by David Parker, who captured the phenomenal emergence of the 1970s and 80s Melbourne music scene.

Birds of a feather

Charting a path from cockatiel to finch, Annette Twyman explores her family portraits and stories.

Listening to form

National Gallery of Australia curator Jane Kinsman discusses the portraiture of Henri Matisse.

All the way with K of K

Sarah Engledow bristles at the biographers’ neglect of Kitchener’s antipodean intervention.

Listomania

Sarah Engledow describes the fall-out once Brett Whiteley stuck Patrick White’s list of his loves and hates onto his great portrait of the writer.

Finest quality

Joanna Gilmour explores the life of Chinese-Australian businessman and philanthropist Quong Tart.

Dane reign

Mette Skougaard and Thomas Lyngby bring eloquent context to Ralph Heimans’ portraits of Crown Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark.

Fine and dandy

Whether the result of misadventure or misdemeanour, many accomplished artists were transported to Australia where they ultimately left a positive mark on the history of art in this country.

All dressed up

Jane Raffan asks do clothes make the portrait, and can the same work with a new title fetch a better price?

Private virtues public lives

Family affections are preserved in a fine selection of intimate portraits.

Final frame

Karl James reflects on soldier portraiture during the Great War.

Love my way

Inga Walton delves into the bohemian group of artists and writers who used each other as muses and transformed British culture.

Back in black

Krysia Kitch reviews black chronicles at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

The Royal she

Traversing paint and pixels, Inga Walton examines portraits of select women in Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits.

A sketch for some portraits

Judith Pugh reflects on Clifton Pugh's approach to portrait making.

Emblems of beauty

Keith Christiansen introduces the exhibition The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Friends and Acquaintances

Dr. Sarah Engledow discusses a collection of drawings and prints by the Victorian artist Rick Amor acquired in 2005.

Home truths

Despite once expressing a limited interest in the self portrait, the idea of it has figured strongly in much of Tracey Moffatt's work and has done so in some of her most distinctive and compelling images.

Generous Janice

Dr Sarah Engledow puts four gifts to the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection in context.

The activist A-list

Dr Sarah Engledow examines a number of figures in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery who were pioneers or substantial supporters of the seminal Australian environmental campaigns of the early 1970s and 1980s.

Home and away

Sir William Dobell painted the portraits of Sir Charles Lloyd Jones and Sir Hudson Fysh, who did much to promote the image of Australia in this country and abroad.

Cultural kaleidoscope

The complex connections between four creative Australians; Patrick White, Sidney Nolan, Robert Helpmann and Peter Sculthorpe.

Sibly irresistible

Alexandra Roginski reveals a forceful feminist figure in the colonial period’s slippery science, phrenology.

The Vanity model

Vanity Fair Editor David Friend describes how the rebirth of the magazine sated our desire for access into the lives of celebrities and set the standard for the new era of portrait photography.

Augustus serendipitous

The London-born son of an American painter, Augustus Earle ended up in Australia by accident in January 1825. 

In the flesh

An exhibition of humanness in ten themes by Penelope Grist.

The real Thea

Long after the portraitist became indifferent to her, and died, a beguiling portrait hung over its subject.

Unknown drawer

Dempsey’s People curator David Hansen chronicles a research tale replete with serendipity, adventure and Tasmanian tigers.

Through thick and thin

Sarah Engledow likes the manifold mediums of Nicholas Harding’s portraiture.

Thrown together

Shipmates for years, James Cook and Joseph Banks each kept a journal but neither man shed light on their relationship.