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Nancy Bird Walton part one

Recorded 1977

Nancy Bird Walton part two

Recorded 1977

Ada Bird Petyarre, 1990

Gift of Leo Christie 2003. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.

Nancy Bird Walton, c. 1973

Gift of Nancy Bird Walton AO OBE 2008. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.

Nancy Bird Walton - Pioneer, 2003

Purchased with funds provided by the Basil Bressler Bequest 2004

The aviatrix

Joanna Gilmour explores the extraordinary life of Australian female aviator Nancy Bird Walton AO OBE

The Memoirs of George Barrington, 1790

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by Ross A Field 2008

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention, Sydney 1891 from Australasia Illustrated, 1891

Purchased 2009

Everybody's heard about the bird

Two professionals; Australian surfer Layne Beachley and photographer Petrina Hicks, combine their strengths to achieve a remarkable portrait.

Girl with Big Stick, Cooloman and Bird, 2022

Purchased 2023

Portrait of a Girl Eating, 2006

Moonbird boy, 2009

Lauren

Portrait 32

This issue features Vanity Fair, Nancy Bird Walton, William Barak, Sidney Kidman, Benjamin Duterrau's portraits of the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania, and more.

The goal is not to live forever

Bruno and Batman, 2010

Joyful sadness

Rozalind Drummond’s photographs in the exhibition Tough and tender let us bring our imagination to the act of looking.

On Albatross Island, 2015

A real tweet

Sarah Engledow plays wingman to Leila Jeffreys.

Cocky McGrath

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

Jacki Weaver, 2018

Commissioned with funds provided by Marilyn Darling AC 2018

Art Handlers' Award 2016

The winner of our Art Handlers' Award receives $1000 and free return transport for their photograph, courtesy of International Art Services.

Gaby Kennard, 2020

Purchased with funds provided by Joan Connery OAM 2020

Explore The Popular Pet Show

Curator, Sarah Engledow, introduces the artists and the animals in The Popular Pet Show.

Headspace 7

Headspace 7: Me and My Place, the seventh in the National Portrait Gallery's series of student exhibitions, will be presented at Commonwealth Place. Me and My Place is the curatorial theme for the 2006 exhibition.

Judy Cassab

The artist's diary profiles six decades of Cassab's work, from the early portrait commissions of the 1950s to later paintings that have helped confirm her eminent place in the canon of Australian portraiture.

Geoff Cousins, 2017

Gift of Geoff Cousins AM 2007

Skin names

The first row of paintings depict stories relating to kinship, introducing significant women relatives.

Women in Vogue: Celebrating Sixty years in Australia

Celebrating sixty years of Australia’s most exceptional women as they appeared in Vogue Australia, the National Portrait Gallery is proud to announce an exhibition in collaboration with this pre-eminent fashion title.

Depth of Field

Over the last five years the National Portrait Gallery has developed a collection of portrait photographs that reflects both the strength and diversity of Australian achievement as well as the talents of our photographers.

Birds of a feather

Charting a path from cockatiel to finch, Annette Twyman explores her family portraits and stories.

Pets of all types take over the National Portrait Gallery

It is not every day that a national gallery turns its walls over to the animal companions that bring unconditional love and joy to their owners but this summer we have opened the doors to 15 contemporary artists with very different ways of depicting our furry, feathered and scaled pets.

First Ladies

First Ladies profiles women who have achieved noteworthy firsts over the past 100 years.

On a human scale

The design concepts behind the new National Portrait Gallery building in Canberra.

So Fine

This exhibition features new works from ten women artists reinterpreting and reimagining elements of Australian history, enriching the contemporary narrative around Australia’s history and biography, reflecting the tradition of storytelling in our country.

Jacki Weaver, 2018

Commissioned with funds provided by Marilyn Darling AC 2018

Icons

When a portrait communicates determination and individuality as boldly as these do, it has the potential to become an iconic image. For the Gallery’s 20th birthday this display brings together a group contemporary photographic portraits of inspiring women and men.

To Look Within

This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits in Australia, from the colonial period to the present

Sideshow Alley

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.

You, looking at me

Elspeth Pitt chats with Archibald Prize-winning artist Yvette Coppersmith about performance, coincidences and the intersection of art and life.

Time and light

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.

Apollo's breath

Christopher Chapman delights in the intimacy of Robert Mapplethorpe's photography

Life class

Barbara Blackman reflects on her experiences as a life model.

Poise and Carats

I keep going back to Cartier: The Exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia next door, and, within the exhibition, to Princess Marie Louise’s diamond, pearl and sapphire Indian tiara (1923), surely one of the most superb head ornaments ever conceived.

Depth of Field

The exhibition Depth of Field displays a selection of portrait photographs that reflect the strength and diversity of Australian achievement.

Reveries

The exhibition Reveries: Photography and mortality is a powerful display which brings together images that depict the last phase of people's lives.

Fiona McMonagle

Fiona aims to create a dangerous situation with a flood of water on the paper, forcing each work to the point where it can fail, and then rescuing it. 

NPPP 2016 exhibition essay

Penny Grist, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2016 Prize.

Trumble's way

At the end of a summer break one is tempted to say that there is nothing much to report. Isn’t one restful holiday very much like another?

In the galleries

Christopher Chapman highlights the inaugural hang of the new National Portrait Gallery building which opened in December 2008.

Mental as everything

Chris O'Doherty, also known as Reg Mombassa, is best-known for his Mambo imagery but he also paints a lot of self portraits.

No small wonder

Joanna Gilmour describes how artist Sam Leach works on a small scale to grand effect.

Painting them gently

Penny Grist on motivation, method and melancholy in the portraiture of Darren McDonald.

Canadian identities

An exploration of national identity in the Canadian context drawn from the symposium Face to Face at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2004.

Embrace your inner nerd

The southern winter has arrived. For people in the northern hemisphere (the majority of humanity) the idea of snow and ice, freezing mist and fog in June, potentially continuing through to August and beyond, encapsulates the topsy-turvidom of our southern continent.

The real Thea

Long after the portraitist became indifferent to her, and died, a beguiling portrait hung over its subject.

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.

Study in scarlet

Angus Trumble reflects on the force of nature that was Helena Rubinstein.

Maria Caroline Brownrigg

At first glance, this small watercolour group portrait of her two sons and four daughters by Maria Caroline Brownrigg (d. 1880) may seem prosaic, even hesitant

The shipwright's arms

Joanna Gilmour explores the life and times of convict-turned-artist William Buelow Gould.

Portrait Donors

The personal and the historical

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.

Petal to the mettle

Sarah Engledow lauds the very civil service of Dame Helen Blaxland.

Less than six degrees of separation

Dr Anne Sanders NPG Curatorial Researcher investigated the lives of the pioneering psychologists whose portraits are featured in Inner Worlds.

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.