Search / caroline

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.

Caroline Zilinsky and John Feitelson

John is a very unique character so I really wanted to capture that uniqueness.

Man with two lives

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.

Petal to the mettle

Sarah Engledow lauds the very civil service of Dame Helen Blaxland.

Queen of cartes

Joanna Gilmour discusses the role of the carte de visite in portraiture’s democratisation, and its harnessing by Victoria, the world’s first media monarch.

The Thyssen Art Macabre

Books seldom make me angry but this one did. At first, I was powerfully struck by the uncanny parallels that existed between the Mellons of Pittsburgh and the Thyssens of the Ruhr through the same period, essentially the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Presence and absence

The art of Australia’s colonial women painters affords us an invaluable, alternative perspective on the nascent nation-building project.

Poise and Carats

I keep going back to Cartier: The Exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia next door, and, within the exhibition, to Princess Marie Louise’s diamond, pearl and sapphire Indian tiara (1923), surely one of the most superb head ornaments ever conceived.

Portrait Donors

2012-13 Acquisition Fund

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

Maria Caroline Brownrigg

At first glance, this small watercolour group portrait of her two sons and four daughters by Maria Caroline Brownrigg (d. 1880) may seem prosaic, even hesitant

Portraiture in a Bleak House

It may seem an odd thing to do at one’s leisure on a beautiful tropical island, but I spent much of my midwinter break a few weeks ago re-reading Bleak House.

An evening at Yarra Cottage, Port Stephens, 1857

Purchased 2017

Bonfire of the vanities

Australian Galleries Director Stuart Purves tells the story of two portraits by John Brack.

Reflections

All that fall: Sacrifice, life and loss in the First World War exhibition co-curators Dr Anne Sanders and Dr Christopher Chapman reflect on the evolution of the Gallery’s Anzac Centenary exhibition.