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Alfred Arthur Greenwood Hales (1860-1936), adventurer, writer and newspaper correspondent, left school and started writing short stories in his teens.
1 portrait in the collection
Gift of Ronald A Walker 2009. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (1844–1900) was the second son and fourth child of Queen Victoria.
4 portraits in the collection
Alfred Simpson (1805–1891), manufacturer, started his professional life as a tinsmith in his native London and also worked as a hatter before financial difficulties caused him to emigrate to Australia in 1849.
1 portrait in the collection
Alfred Hill CMG OBE (1869-1960) was a composer, conductor and violinist.
2 portraits in the collection
Alfred Deakin (1856-1919), Australia's second, fifth and seventh Prime Minister, was central to the Federation movement.
1 portrait in the collection
Alfred Barry (1826-1910), Anglican bishop of Sydney and primate of the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, was educated at King’s College, London and at Cambridge.
2 portraits in the collection
Alfred William Cox (1857–1919), racehorse owner and breeder, was born in Liverpool, England, the son of a successful cotton broker.
1 portrait in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2012
Alfred George Stephens (1865–1933), editor, journalist and publisher, was born and educated in Toowoomba.
1 portrait in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by L Gordon Darling AC CMG 2014
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2000
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Ted and Gina Gregg 2012
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Ted and Gina Gregg 2012
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2020
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2020
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2012
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2020
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2015
Purchased 2015
Gift of Ronald A Walker 2009. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Purchased 2015
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.
Gift of Catherine Dwyer 2021
Henry Mundy's portraits flesh out notions of propriety and good taste in a convict colony.
Elvis at 21 is a photographic exhibition capturing Elvis’ rise to fame in the year 1956, before security and money built walls between him and his fans.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by L Gordon Darling AC CMG 2014
Hi-resolution images for media representatives, password required.
Press releases and images downloads for media.
This year's theme calls upon students to consider the concept of 'The Journey'.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2012
George Nicholas CBE (1884-1960), pharmacist and philanthropist, grew up in South Australia and Victoria.
1 portrait in the collection
These books include sixteen inmates including Ned Kelly, Captain Moonlite and Frederick Deeming and twelve sketches of the deceased, including several children. For Year 7 – 9 students.
Ria Murch (1918-2014), writer and muse, was brought up in King’s Cross and attended the Thosophist school in Mosman before acquiring secretarial skills at Miss Hales Business College.
1 portrait in the collection
Annie May Moore (1881-1931) was born in New Zealand and studied at the Elam School of Art and Design in Auckland.
5 portraits in the collection
Jane Kennerley (nee Rouse) was born in Parramatta and in 1834 married Alfred Kennerley (1810-1897) who, like Jane's father, owned large amounts of land in western Sydney and on the Cudgegong River.
1 portrait in the collection
Alfred Vincent began working for the Bulletin in 1896, taking over from the renowned Phil May, his idol, with whom he was often - inevitably - unfavourably compared.
1 portrait in the collection
Antoine Maurin, lithographer, is little known. He was born in Perpignan, France, and died in Paris.
6 portraits in the collection
Elliott & Fry, a photography studio and photographic film manufacturer, was founded in 1863 at 55-56 Baker Street, London by Joseph John Elliott and Clarence Edmund Fry.
2 portraits in the collection
Purchased 2001
Purchased 2006
Charles Alfred Woolley (1834-1922), photographer and sketcher, ran a studio on Macquarie Street in Hobart from 1859 to 1870, producing numerous portraits along with views and stereographs of Hobart and surrounding areas.
6 portraits in the collection
Sir Stanley Seymour Argyle (1867-1940), premier and medical practitioner, studied medicine at the University of Melbourne and at King’s College, London.
1 portrait in the collection
This exhibition focuses on exploring national and communal identity through sculptural production in Australia, from the early decades of settlement through to the present day
To complement the exhibition Australians and the Nobel Prize, Jennifer Gason gives us a sense of the proceedings that occur during the award ceremony.
On the day before the Hon. E. G. Whitlam, AC, QC, died last month, at the great age of 98, there were seven former prime ministers of Australia still living, plus the incumbent Mr. Abbott – eight in all.
Henry Bryan Hall grew up in England and began his trade as an apprentice to the engravers Benjamin Smith and Henry Meyer.
1 portrait in the collection
Sir George Houstoun Reid GCB GCMG KC (1845-1918) was Australian prime minister from August 1904 to July 1905.
3 portraits in the collection
Tuisko Turso (‘TT’) Seppelt (1891-1957) was Victorian manager of the Seppelt wine company from 1917.
1 portrait in the collection
Xavier Herbert (1901 –1984), author, was born Alfred Jackson to a single mother in Geraldton, WA.
2 portraits in the collection
Complementing our 2013 exhibition Elvis at 21, this resource has connections with the Australian Curriculum and is designed primarily for Year 10 teachers of English, History, Music and Visual Arts.
Gift of Richard Due 2010
This display celebrates 100 years of the Historic Memorials Collection and its role in commissioning portraits of parliamentary and judicial figures in Australia.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Ric Techow and Jenny Techow-Coleman in memory of Roy and Bet Techow 2001
Julia Margaret Cameron was of the most important photographers of the nineteenth century.
1 portrait in the collection
Sir Cecil Colville (1891-1984), medical practitioner, was the first president of the Australian Medical Association.
1 portrait in the collection
Sir Ivor Hele (1912–1993) was born in Adelaide and studied art at Prince Alfred College and the South Australian School of Arts and, later, in Paris and Munich.
3 portraits in the collection
Purchased with funds provided by Graham Smith 2009
Jacques Miller AC (b. 1931), immunologist, spent his early childhood in Shanghai and Lausanne before coming to Sydney with his parents at the age of ten.
2 portraits in the collection
Sir William John Lyne (1844-1913), politician, was a Premier of New South Wales and a minister in the first Australian parliament.
1 portrait in the collection
Purchased 1999
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 1999
Dame Judith Anderson AC DBE (1897–1992) was an Adelaide-born stage and film actress well known for her role as the sinister Mrs Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940).
1 portrait in the collection
Purchased 2010
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2012
George Rayner Hoff (1894-1937), sculptor, was born in England and trained at the Royal College of Art, London.
2 portraits in the collection
Joseph Darling (1870–1946) took up cricket in earnest while a student at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide and was fifteen when he set a new record for the highest innings (252) scored in South Australia.
2 portraits in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Ann Korner, Nicholas Korner, Anthony Korner and Harriet Bingham 2015
Purchased 2012
Purchased 2019
Ernest Giles (1835-1897), explorer, came to Australia at the age of fifteen, settling in Adelaide.
1 portrait in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2015
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by L Gordon Darling AC CMG 2014
John Cobley (1914-1989), doctor, historian and television host, studied at State schools, won a scholarship to the University of Sydney and graduated in medicine and science in 1937.
1 portrait in the collection
Sir Laurence Hartnett (1898-1986), automotive engineer, was born in Woking, Surrey.
1 portrait in the collection
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.
David Lloyd Jones (1931–1961) was the great-grandson of the original David Jones – who founded the eponymous department store in Sydney in 1838 – and the eldest son of Sir Charles Lloyd Jones (1878–1958), who was chairman of David Jones Ltd from 1920 until his death.
1 portrait in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2018
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010
This month I turn fifty, soI am just now looking rather more closely than usual at Fiona Foley, Steven Heathcote, Brenda Croft, Russell Crowe, Jeff Fenech, Akira Isogawa, Lee Kernaghan, My Le Thi, Shona Wilson and Mark Taylor AO, mindful that they too were 1964 arrivals.
Sir Oswald Brierly (1817–1894), marine painter and adventurer, studied art, naval architecture and navigation in England before his fascination with seafaring caused him to sign up as staff artist on the Wanderer – a schooner owned by entrepreneur Benjamin Boyd, who was about to embark on a round-the-world trip.
1 portrait in the collection
Rennie Ellis: Aussies All is a celebration of the life and work of the late Australian photographer Rennie Ellis.
Presented by Sir Roy Strong and the late Dr Julia Trevelyan Oman in memory of their friendship with Gordon Darling and Marilyn Darling 2006
Purchased with funds provided by Graham Smith 2009
Thomas Woolner, sculptor, studied first with the brothers Henry and William Behnes, painter and sculptor respectively, and later at the Royal Academy, at which he was to become professor of sculpture in his fifties.
5 portraits in the collection
Arthur Thomas 'A T' Woodward (1865–1943), painter and art scholar, was born in Birmingham, England.
1 portrait in the collection
Purchased with funds provided by Graham Smith 2009
An interview with the photographer.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Malcolm Robertson in memory of William Thomas Robertson 2018
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Malcolm Robertson in memory of William Thomas Robertson 2018
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Seventeen of Australia’s thirty prime ministers to date are represented in the contrasting sizes, moods and mediums of these portraits.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by Graham Smith 2009
Born 1966 in Beijing, China. Lives and works in Beijing.
This exhibition showcases portraits acquired through the generosity of the National Portrait Gallery’s Founding Patrons, L Gordon Darling AC CMG and Marilyn Darling AC.
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.
Death masks, post-mortem drawings and other spooky and disquieting portraits... Come and see how portraits of infamous Australians were used in the 19th century.
First Ladies profiles women who have achieved noteworthy firsts over the past 100 years.
Ashleigh Wadman rediscovers the Australian characters represented with a kindly touch by the British portrait artist Leslie Ward for the society magazine Vanity Fair.
The portrait of Janet and Horace Keats with the spirit of the poet Christopher Brennan is brought to life by artist Dora Toovey.
Artist David M Thomas lists some of the ideas and influences behind his video portraits.
Tennyson's Enoch Arden was inspired by a story that Thomas Woolner passed on to him – but whose story and of whom?
Celebrates the centenary of the first national art collection, the Historic Memorials Collection, housed at Australia's Parliament House.
In 2006 the National Portrait Gallery acquired a splendid portrait of Victoria's first governor, Lieutenant Governor Charles Joseph La Trobe by Thomas Woolner.
I met Kaloti Parmjit the day I took the photo. I first visited the Sikh temple in the suburb of Glenwood to take photos as part of a social documentary project I'm undertaking for the State Library of NSW.
A short overview of modern Chinese art from 1949 to the present.
In March 2003 Magda Keaney travelled to London to join the photography section of the Victoria & Albert Museum for three months.
Christopher Chapman delights in the intimacy of Robert Mapplethorpe's photography
Malcolm Robertson tells the family history of one of Australia's earliest patrons of the arts, his Scottish born great great great grandfather, William Robertson.
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.
Michael Desmond in conversation with University of Houston professor of philosophy Cynthia Freeland.
Dempsey’s People curator David Hansen chronicles a research tale replete with serendipity, adventure and Tasmanian tigers.
In 1904, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia purchased as a gift for her sister, Queen Alexandra, a fan composed of two-color gold, guilloché enamel, mother-of-pearl, blond tortoiseshell, gold sequins, silk, cabochon rubies, and rose diamonds from the House of Fabergé in Saint Petersburg.
An extensive selection of portraits by John Brack were on display at the National Portrait Gallery in late 2007.
The exhibition Aussies all features the ecclectic portrait photography of Rennie Ellis which captures Australian life during the 70s and 80s.
This edited version of a speech by Andrew Sayers examines some of the antecedents of the National Portrait Gallery and set out the ideas behind the modern Gallery and its collection.
Inga Walton traces the poignant path of photographer Polixeni Papapetrou, revealed in the NGV’s summer retrospective.
Karen Vickery on Chang the Chinese giant in Australia.
Joanna Gilmour reflects on 25 years of collecting at the National Portrait Gallery.
Christopher Chapman absorbs the gentle touch of Don Bachardy’s portraiture.
Alexandra Roginski gets a feel for phrenology’s fundamentals.
Alexandra Roginski reveals a forceful feminist figure in the colonial period’s slippery science, phrenology.
John Singer Sargent: a painter at the vanguard of contemporary movements in music, literature and theatre.
Sarah Engledow explores the history of the prime ministers and artists featured in the exhibition.
Sarah Engledow bristles at the biographers’ neglect of Kitchener’s antipodean intervention.
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.
Some years ago my colleague Andrea Wolk Rager and I spent several days in the darkened basement of a Rothschild Bank, inspecting every one of the nearly 700 autochromes created immediately before World War I by the youthful Lionel de Rothschild.
Dr Anne Sanders NPG Curatorial Researcher investigated the lives of the pioneering psychologists whose portraits are featured in Inner Worlds.