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Sauvages Des Montagnes-Bleues from de Freycinet, Louis - Voyage autour du monde, Paris, c. 1822

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Ted and Gina Gregg 2012

Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville, c. 1825

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2015

Forget me not

Bill

Joel, Mitchell Queensland, 2014

The Companion

On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.

James, 2009

Impressions

Impressions: Painting light and life presents portraits by, and of, artists at the heart of Australian impressionism including Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin.

Jimmy and Jane Barnes, 2020

Purchased 2021

Carla Zampatti

Recorded 2019

Wenten Rubuntja, 1998

Gift of Patrick Corrigan AM 2004. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.

Wenten Rubuntja, 2001

Gift of Patrick Corrigan AM 2004. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.

Fiona McMonagle

Born: 1977, Letterkenny, Ireland
Works: Melbourne

William Barak

The intellectual larrikin

Barrie Cassidy pays textured tribute to the inimitable Bob Hawke.

School visit information

All you need to know from COVID-19 and group sizes to cancellations and our Certificate of Currency.

Adrian Brown

An interview with the photographer.

Gillian Armstrong, 1985

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the Estate of Stuart Campbell 2012

Masters of Fare

Masters of fare: chefs, winemakers, providores celebrates men and women who have championed the unique culinary characteristics and produce of Australia, enriching our lives with new ideas and new flavours over the past forty years.

The art of peace

Sean Davey captures the portrait of a nation renewed.

Flesh, figure and rock

Aimee Board traces Judy Cassab’s path to the Australian outback, arriving at the junction of inspiration and abstraction.

Powerful Indigenous women

June Oscar AO lauds three iconic Aboriginal figures in the Portrait Gallery collection who have inspired and influenced her.

Activating the space

Sandra Phillips on portraits of Indigenous activism from Cairns Art Gallery’s 2019 Queen’s Land Blak Portraiture exhibition.

The more things change

National Photographic Portrait Prize curator, Sarah Engledow, finds reward in a difficult task and ultimately uncovers the essence of portraiture.

Agnes enigma

Karen Quinlan considers the case of Agnes Goodsir, whose low profile in Australia belies her overseas acclaim.

Australians in Hollywood

The exhibition Australians in Hollywood celebrated the achievements of Australians in the highly competitive American film industry.

The play’s the thing

Penelope Grist charts an immersive path through Stuart Spence’s photography.

Money and swat

Andrew Sayers discusses the real cost of George Lambert's Self portrait with gladioli 1922.

An Australian story

In his speech launching the new National Portrait Gallery building on 3 December 2008, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd set the Gallery in a national and historical context.

Beguiling impressions

Sarah Engledow is seduced by the portraits and the connections between the artists and their subjects in the exhibition Impressions: Painting light and life.

Flash mob

Sarah Engledow trains her exacting lens on the nine photographs from 20/20.

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.

20/20 launch speech

Dr Helen Nugent AO, Chairman, National Portrait Gallery at the opening of 20/20: Celebrating twenty years with twenty new portrait commissions.

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.

Material culture

The Rajah Quilt’s narrative promptings are as intriguing as the textile is intricate.

All the way with K of K

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

Christmas Island

This is my last Trumbology before, in a little more than a week from now, I pass to my successor Karen Quinlan the precious baton of the Directorship of the National Portrait Gallery.