Ticketed entry is in place to safely manage your visit so please book ahead. Need to cancel or rejig? Email bookings@npg.gov.au
Sir George Coles CBE (1885–1977) was the founder of the retail concern GJ Coles and Coy.
1 portrait in the collection
Sir Edgar Barton ‘EB’ Coles (1899-1981) was the longest-serving chief executive of the Coles retail group.
2 portraits in the collection
Arthur Vernon was the general secretary of the United Labourers’ Protective Society, a delegate to the Sydney Labour Council, a member of the Eight Hours committee, and a Labour alderman of the city for Cook ward.
1 portrait in the collection
Arthur Murch, artist, is best-known as a painter in a colourful cubistic style, but he was occupied with sculpture throughout his career.
8 portraits in the collection
Arthur Horner was born in Malvern, Victoria, and attended Sydney High School and the National Art School.
1 portrait in the collection
Arthur Summons (1935-2020), footballer, played fly-half in ten rugby union test matches for the Wallabies between 1956 and 1960 before joining rugby league's Western Suburbs Magpies in 1960.
1 portrait in the collection
Arthur Boyd AC OBE (1920-1999), painter, potter and printmaker, was amongst Australia's greatest painters.
14 portraits in the collection
Arthur Triggs (1868-1936), pastoralist and collector, is sometimes referred to as the 'Kidman of the wool industry'.
1 portrait in the collection
Arthur Phillip (1738–1814), first governor of New South Wales, began his career while a boy in London.
2 portraits in the collection
Arthur William Burman was one of the nine children of photographer William Insull Burman (1814-1890), who came to Victoria in 1853.
2 portraits in the collection
Dr Arthur Martin a’Beckett FRCS (1812-1871) surgeon and New South Wales parliamentarian studied at London University from 1831 before undertaking a residency in Paris, centre for innovation in the practice of hygiene, pathological anatomy and physiopathology.
2 portraits in the collection
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
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), army officer and hero, was the prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1828 to 1830.
1 portrait in the collection
John Allen Manton (1807–1864), Wesleyan minister, arrived in Australia in 1831.
1 portrait in the collection
William Insull Burman came to Victoria in 1853 and worked as a painter and decorator before establishing his own photography business in Carlton in about 1863.
1 portrait in the collection
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
John Shortland (1739-1803), naval officer, was a member of a family of which six members were associated with the colonisation of Australia and New Zealand.
1 portrait in the collection
John Perceval AO (1923-2000) was a painter and ceramic artist. Early on, along with Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Albert Tucker, he was part of a loose group of largely self-taught Australian artists, now known as the Angry Penguins, who rebelled against the conservatism of the art establishment.
10 portraits in the collection
Dame Annie Florence Cardell-Oliver (1876-1965), politician, grew up in Melbourne before marrying a wool buyer and returning with him to England.
1 portrait in the collection
Lisa McCune (b. 1971) actor, made her stage debut at fifteen in a production of The Wizard of Oz in Perth.
1 portrait in the collection
Amandus Julius Fischer (1859-1948) began his art studies in Sydney before proceeding to the Westminster School of art in London, and the Académie Julian and the Atelier Colarossi in Paris.
1 portrait in the collection
George A Highland (1874-1954), theatrical producer, grew up in England, where, as a choirboy, he came to the attention of Arthur Sullivan.
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
Tim Burstall (1927-2004) set up Eltham Films in the early 1950s, when the local film industry was moribund.
2 portraits in the collection
Joy Hester (1920-1960) was the only female member of the Angry Penguin movement, which included artists Tucker, Sydney Nolan and Arthur Boyd.
1 portrait in the collection
Karl Duldig (1902-1986) studied art in Vienna between 1923 to 1933, interrupted by his success in sport, first as a soccer international, then as a tennis player and finally as a table-tennis title holder.
1 portrait in the collection
Carl Cooper (1912-1966), ceramic decorator, contracted poliomyelitis in his twenties.
1 portrait in the collection
Ursula Hoff AO OBE (1909–2005) was a curator, art historian and academic.
1 portrait in the collection
Kenneth Rowell (1920-1999), painter, made his career in both the visual and the performing arts.
2 portraits in the collection
Rudy Komon (1908-1982) was an art dealer and gallery director. After working as a journalist in Czechoslovakia, where he served with the Czech resistance during the war, he emigrated to Sydney and opened an antique store.
3 portraits in the collection
Harold 'Hal' Hattam (1913-1994), doctor, artist and art collector, came to Australia from his native Scotland at the age of seven.
1 portrait in the collection
John Hunter (1737-1821), naval officer and governor, came to Sydney as second captain of the Sirius, the flagship of the First Fleet.
3 portraits in the collection
Philip Gidley King (1758-1808), naval officer and governor, joined the navy in late 1770 and served in the East Indies and American waters.
1 portrait in the collection
Peter Allen (1944-1992) was born Peter Allen Woolnough in Tenterfield, NSW.
1 portrait in the collection
Robert Henderson Croll (1869-1947), author, worked as a clerk in the Victorian public service for over 40 years, but is better remembered for his books and journalism.
2 portraits in the collection
Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool (1729–1808), statesman, was educated at Oxford and entered parliament in 1761.
1 portrait in the collection
David Davies began studying art at the School of Mines and Industries in his birthplace, Ballarat.
1 portrait in the collection
William Buckley (1780-1856), known as 'the wild white man', was transported for life in 1802 for receiving stolen cloth.
1 portrait in the collection
H. Walter Barnett (1862-1934) was a leading portrait photographer of the late Victorian, Edwardian and interwar periods.
12 portraits in the collection
Peter Dombrovskis, photographer and environmental activist, was born of Latvian parents in a refugee camp in Wiesbaden at the end of World War 2.
1 portrait in the collection
Barbara Blackman (b. 1928) was only 15 when the ABC Weekly published one of her poems.
5 portraits in the collection
Deidre But-Husaim (b. 1959), based in Adelaide, South Australia, undertook her formative art study at the Adelaide Central School of Art, where she has since taught painting.
2 portraits in the collection
Walter Withers (1854-1914), painter, interior designer and teacher, trained at the Royal Academy in London before coming to Australia at the end of 1882.
1 portrait in the collection
Klaus Friedeberger (b. 1922) fled Germany for England at the age of sixteen, and the next year found himself on the Dunera bound for internment in Australia.
1 portrait in the collection
Wes Walters (1928-2014), painter, studied architecture in Geelong and art at the Ballarat School of Mines before embarking on a successful career as a freelance commercial artist in 1950.
3 portraits in the collection
Patrick Ryan (d. 1990) and Tim Burstall set up Eltham Films in the early 1950s, when the local film industry was moribund.
1 portrait in the collection
Alexander George Mitchell (1911-1997), academic, studied English literature and language at the University of Sydney and the University of London before joining the English department of the University of Sydney, where he assumed the McCaughey Chair of Early English Literature and Language in 1947.
1 portrait in the collection
Captain Robert Clark Morgan (1798-1864), Christian mariner, whaler and diarist, entered the Royal Navy at the age of eleven, leaving at sixteen for the merchant marine and beginning a career in whaling, a pursuit he relished.
1 portrait in the collection
Joan Redshaw AM (1921-1994), medical practitioner, chose her career in opposition to her father, a judge, who thought the University of Sydney medical school was a hotbed of women’s activists and bluestockings.
1 portrait in the collection
Hilda Spong (1875-1955), actress, came to Australia with her family when she was thirteen.
1 portrait in the collection
Harold Parker (1873-1962), sculptor, came to Brisbane with his English parents as a three-year old.
1 portrait in the collection
Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney PC (1733-1800) was British Home Secretary in the Pitt Government, given responsibility for devising a plan to settle convicts at Botany Bay.
1 portrait in the collection
Charles Troedel (1835-1906), born in Hamburg, was working in Norway when he was headhunted by AW Schuhkrafft, a Melbourne printer who seeking European craftsmen.
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.
4 portraits in the collection
James Robert M. Robertson (1844-1932), mining engineer and coal magnate, was the son of a Scottish surgeon and colliery owner, and qualified in medicine himself before opting for a career in mining.
1 portrait in the collection
William Hardy Wilson (1881-1955) - or Hardy Wilson, as he styled himself - is regarded as one of the most significant and visionary Australian architects of the twentieth century.
1 portrait in the collection
William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806) was Tory prime minister of Great Britain from 1783 to 1801, and of United Kingdom from 1804 to 1806.
1 portrait in the collection
David Collins (1756–1810), lieutenant-governor, began his career in the British Navy, rising to the rank of captain before being returning to dry land and being placed on half-pay in late 1783.
1 portrait in the collection
Donald Friend (1915-1989), painter, writer and diarist, studied at the RAS and Dattilo-Rubbo’s school in Sydney before spending 1935 and 1936 at the Westminster School in London.
2 portraits in the collection
Robert Neill arrived in Van Diemen’s Land from Edinburgh in 1820 with his free-settler parents and two siblings.
1 portrait in the collection
Olegas Truchanas (1923-1972) was born in 1923 in Siauliai, Lithuania.
1 portrait in the collection
Tom Roberts (1856–1931), artist, came to Australia from England at the age of 13, but returned eight years later to study art in London.
12 portraits in the collection
Herbert John Louis (Bert) Hinkler (1892-1933), aviator, worked with a photographer and in sugar mills before joining the Queensland Aero club and taking a correspondence course in mechanics.
1 portrait in the collection
Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois (1821-1897), governor, attended the Royal Military Academy before being commissioned to the Royal Engineers in 1839.
1 portrait in the collection
Liverpool-born William Buelow Gould (1803-1853) had worked as a draftsman for the London printmaker, Rudolph Ackermann, and as a painter for a Staffordshire pottery before being transported to Van Diemen’s Land for theft in 1827.
1 portrait in the collection
Andrew Sayers AM (1957–2015) was inaugural Director of the National Portrait Gallery.
2 portraits in the collection
Peter Elliott AM (1926-2014) was an obstetrician, gynaecologist and gynaecological oncologist as well as a significant art collector and patron.
6 portraits in the collection
Henry Baynton Somer ‘Jo’ Gullett AM MC (1914-1999), soldier, politician, ambassador, farmer and author, was the son of Sir Henry Gullett, who was one of the Australian official historians of the First World War.
1 portrait in the collection
Charles Henry Theodore Costantini (also Constantine, Constantini and Costantine) was a Paris-born surgeon of Italian descent who was twice transported to the Australian colonies in the 1820s.
1 portrait in the collection
William Henry Harvey (1811-1866), botanist, formed a boyhood passion for natural history which was encouraged at Ballitore School, County Kildare.
1 portrait in the collection
George Frederick Ernest Albert, The Duke of Cornwall and York and later King George V (1865-1936), was the son of Edward VII, the man for whom the Edwardian era was named.
4 portraits in the collection
George Frederick Ernest Albert, The Duke of Cornwall and York and later King George V (1865-1936), was the son of Edward VII, the man for whom the Edwardian era was named.
3 portraits in the collection