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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.

Opening of the First Legislative Council of Victoria by Governor Charles Joseph LaTrobe at St Patrick's Hall, Bourke Street West, Melbourne November 13th 1851

Magna Carta

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On this day eight hundred years ago at Runnymede near Windsor, King John signed Magna Carta.

Angus Trumble with Portrait of Sir Joseph Banks by Thomas Phillips

Banksia and grevillea

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Portraits can render honour to remarkable men and women, but there are other ways.

Cocky McGrath

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The long life and few words of a vice-regal cockatoo

HM Queen Elizabeth II

Longest reign

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Queen Elizabeth II is now the longest-reigning British sovereign

Thomas Woolner

Missing Persons

Thomas Woolner in Australia
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Desperately seeking Woolner medallions

Monument to Mrs. Moore St. Luke’s Church, Liverpool, Sydney

Waterloo and Mrs. Moore

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Beyond the centenary of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli, a number of other notable anniversaries converge this year. Waterloo deserves a little focussed consideration, for in the decades following 1815 numerous Waterloo and Peninsular War veterans came to Australia.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

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Nothing quite prepares the first-time visitor to Cambodia for the scale and grandeur of the monuments of the ancient Khmer civilisation of Angkor.

H.H. Princess Marie Louise

Happy New Year

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This year (in March) we will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the formal establishment of the National Portrait Gallery. In the life of institutions, twenty years is not a long time.

Ursula Hoff

Remembering Ursula

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I first knew Dr. Hoff when in 1986, long after retiring from the National Gallery of Victoria, she taught a graduate seminar on Rembrandt.

Helen Borthwick née Pearson

The personal and the historical

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Where do we draw a line between the personal and the historical? Although she died in Melbourne in 1975, when I was not quite eleven years old, I have the vividest memories of my maternal grandmother Helen Borthwick.

James Mccabe Executed Jany. 6th 1826

The consolations of religion

A bushranger meets his maker, 6 January 1826
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James McCabe provides proof that hanging wasn’t necessarily a fate reserved for the perpetrators of murder and other deeds of darkest hue. 

Indexing, the art of

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The first index I created was for my first book, and, to my astonishment, that was almost twenty-five years ago.

Lord Kitchener

Lord Kitchener

Imperial strategist
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Once central to military strategy and venerated in patriotic households, Lord Kitchener is now largely forgotten.

'Moses' by Michelangelo, c. 1513–1515

Not perspiring, but glowing.

The cultural history of radiance.
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Angus Trumble explores the creative manifestations of radiance.

Ellen Stirling

Very fine and very like

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When did notions of very fine and very like become separate qualities of a portrait? And what happens to 'very like' in the age of photographic portraiture?

The great South Sea caterpillar transformed into a Bath Butterfly (Sir Joseph Banks)

The Bath Butterfly

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The caricaturist and engraver James Gillray's biting satires about Sir Joseph Banks. 

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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

This website comprises and contains copyrighted materials and works. Copyright in all materials and/or works comprising or contained within this website remains with the National Portrait Gallery and other copyright owners as specified.

The National Portrait Gallery respects the artistic and intellectual property rights of others. The use of images of works of art reproduced on this website and all other content may be restricted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Requests for a reproduction of a work of art or other content can be made through a Reproduction request. For further information please contact NPG Copyright.

The National Portrait Gallery is an Australian Government Agency