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This sample of 56 photographs takes in some of the smallest photographs we own and some of the largest, some of the earliest and some of the most recent, as well as multiple photographic processes from daguerreotypes to digital media.
Sarah Engledow explores the history of the prime ministers and artists featured in the exhibition.
Seventeen of Australia’s thirty prime ministers to date are represented in the contrasting sizes, moods and mediums of these portraits.
Purchased 2019
Gift of J.B. Windeyer 2018
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2016
Sarah Engledow ponders the divergent legacies of Messrs Kendall and Lawson.
Purchased 2015
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2014
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Adrian McGlusky 2013
It wasn’t uncommon for the pro-beard fraternity of the mid nineteenth century to cite beards as a sign of wisdom on the grounds that Socrates and other ancient philosophers had worn them.
Although the tough, weathered, hard-drinking bushmen of the kind mythologised by writers like Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson are popularly associated with the character of late nineteenth century Australia, it was also a time when alternative ideas about identity began to come into play.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the Windeyer family 2012
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by the Liangis family 2012
This display celebrates 100 years of the Historic Memorials Collection and its role in commissioning portraits of parliamentary and judicial figures in Australia.
Celebrates the centenary of the first national art collection, the Historic Memorials Collection, housed at Australia's Parliament House.