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Photographer Bill Henson describes creating his three part portrait of Simone Young.
Bill Henson AO was only 19 when his photographs were first exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria in his home city of Melbourne.
1 portrait in the collection
Commissioned with funds provided by the Farrell Family Foundation and the Basil Bressler Bequest 2002
Editor Stephen Phillips looks at the finalists' photographs through a judge's lens.
Penelope Grist speaks to Bill Henson and Simone Young to discover the origins of the artist’s stunning photographic triptych.
Bill May (1915-1993), luthier, completed an apprenticeship in cabinetmaking and taught woodwork before founding Mayton Stringed Instruments and Repairs in the early 1940s.
1 portrait in the collection
Bill Neidjie OAM (c. 1913-2002), a Gagadju man, was the traditional custodian of the Kakadu area of the Northern Territory and spent most of his childhood in this region.
1 portrait in the collection
Bill McAuley began his career as a photographer for newspapers and magazines in Melbourne in 1969.
9 portraits in the collection
Bill Hunter (1940-2011), actor, spent five decades on Australian television and cinema screens.
1 portrait in the collection
Bill Leak (1956-2017), portrait painter and caricaturist, trained at the Julian Ashton art school in the mid-1970s, and began his career painting landscapes.
7 portraits in the collection
Bill Robertson CBE MC (1917-2011), public servant, was educated at Melbourne Grammar and Oxford, where he graduated from the school of Natural Philosophy in 1939.
1 portrait in the collection
Bill Collins OAM (1934-2019), television movie host and critic, was a high school English teacher and lecturer at teachers’ college before beginning a record 55-year stint on Australian television.
1 portrait in the collection
The Hon Bill Hayden AC (1933‒2023) was Governor-General of Australia from 1989 to 1996 and Leader of the Opposition from 1977 to 1983.
1 portrait in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2005
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2001
Purchased 2010
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010
Gift of the artist 2008
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2002
Gift of Joan Collins and the Todd-Wilson family in memory of Bill Collins 2019. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Gift of the artist 2004. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2011
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2011
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Dr Robert Edwards AO 1999
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010
Purchased 2010
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Richard and Birgit Woolcott 2007
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the Australian Securities Exchange 2012
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of L Gordon Darling AC CMG 2008
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Commissioned with funds provided by L Gordon Darling AC CMG 1999
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010
Purchased 2010
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2002
Purchased 2010
A portrait story that explores the life and times of legendary Australian cricketer Sir Donald Bradman.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2018
Magda Keaney talks with Bill Leak about his bold new portrait of Robert Hughes in the National Portrait Gallery collection.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by Wayne Williams 2011
Gift of the artist 1999. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010
Recorded 2021
From Brandt's early work that documents fixed social contrasts of pre-World War II life in Britain to his later experimentation with a surreal style, this exhibition spans 50 years of Brandt's far reaching career in an extensive assemblage of 155 vintage gelatin silver prints from the Bill Brandt Archive in London.
Paul Cézanne, Bill Henson and Simone Young, Australian cinema’s iconic women, and feminist portraits by Kate Just.
Roslyn Oxley AM, gallerist and art dealer, was born Roslyn Walton, the daughter of John Walton, owner of the department store Waltons.
1 portrait in the collection
Sarah Engledow on Messrs Dobell and MacMahon and the art of friendship.
Bruce Pollard (b. 1936), gallerist, established the Pinocotheca Gallery in a St Kilda mansion in 1967, and relocated it to an old hat factory in Richmond in 1970.
1 portrait in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2004
Former NPG Director Andrew Sayers discusses the art of commissioning portraits.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2008
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2008
Louise Hearman (b. 1963), graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1984 and has built her visual arts career over the decades since.
2 portraits in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 1999
This issue of Portrait Magazine features Bill Leak's portrait of Robert Hughes, Polly Borland's photographs, Bill Brandt, Andy Thomas, Tracey Moffatt and more.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2008
The exhibition is selected from a national field of entries, reflecting the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2008
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2008
Commissioned with funds provided by Peter Weiss AO 2018
The Rev. Fred Nile MLC (b. 1934) Leader of the Christian Democratic Party was born and raised in King's Cross, Sydney.
1 portrait in the collection
Richard Tognetti AO (b. 1965), violinist, conductor and composer, trained with William Primrose in Wollongong and Alice Waten in Sydney before undertaking further studies with Igor Ozim in Switzerland.
2 portraits in the collection
Bill Beach (1850-1935), sculler, came to New South Wales as a young boy with his English parents, who settled at Albion Park, NSW.
1 portrait in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2013
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the Estate of Stuart Campbell 2012
Spanning 30 years, these portraits capture a life in music. Violinist, conductor and composer Richard Tognetti AO is Artistic Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Gift of the artist 2025. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
In light of recent and ongoing gallery closures brought on by the COVID pandemic, the NPG’s 2021 National Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition season will be extended until 16 January next year.
Former NPG Director, Andrew Sayers celebrates the support given to the Gallery by Gordon and Marilyn Darling.
The National Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition is selected from a national field of entries that reflect the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects.
Sir Robert Ponsonby Staples, third son of Sir Nathaniel Staples, Bt, was born in Northern Ireland, educated in Belgium, and studied architecture and art in Louvain, Dresden, Paris and London.
1 portrait in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2011
Claude Spurgeon Charlick (1893-1974), businessman, was managing director of the Adelaide firm Charlick Ltd for nearly forty years.
1 portrait 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
Esther Erlich (b. 1955), a Melbourne-based painter, has been exhibiting since the early 1980s, often with the Libby Edwards Galleries in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane and the Barry Newton Gallery in Adelaide.
3 portraits in the collection
Hayward 'Bill' Veal was born in Eaglemont, Victoria, and studied in Melbourne with AD Colquhoun and Max Meldrum between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four.
1 portrait in the collection
Karin Catt grew up in Newcastle, where she began taking photographs of touring bands while a schoolgirl, and also in London and Hong Kong.
9 portraits in the collection
Gift of Ronald A Walker 2009. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Andrew Maccoll (b. 1978) is a photographer and creative director. Born into an artistic family (his father is a press photographer and his mother a documentary producer) he worked as a darkroom printing assistant while studying for his degree in Visual Arts in Photography at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.
3 portraits in the collection
Australian photographer Karin Catt has photographed world leaders, a host of rock stars and Oscar-winning compatriots Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, and Cate Blanchett.
George Garrard ARA, born in London, trained under the animal painter Sawrey Gilpin and enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools at the end of 1778.
1 portrait in the collection
Gift of Enid Hawkins 2003. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Commissioned with funds provided by Dr Justin Garrick & Dharini Ganesan Rasu, Dino Nikias & Dimitra Nikias, Jim Windeyer, Claudia Hyles OAM, Sotiria Liangis AM & John Liangis, The Hon Mary Finn, Bill Farmer AO & Elaine Farmer, Tim Efkarpidis, Bob Nattey & Charlotte Nattey, Jennifer Bott AO, Keith Bradley, Dr Sam Whittle & Heather Whittle 2017
Richard Edward O'Connor (1851-1912), barrister and judge, was raised and educated in Sydney.
1 portrait in the collection
Koiki (Eddie) Mabo (1937-1992) was born and lived in the Torres Strait until 1959 when he moved to the mainland.
1 portrait in the collection
Mungo MacCallum (1941–2020) was one of Australia's best-known political journalists.
1 portrait in the collection
Phyllis Shillito (1895-1980), designer and teacher, grew up in Yorkshire and trained and taught at Halifax Technical School before moving to teach design, craft and principles of art at Winchester School of Art and Liverpool City School of Art.
1 portrait in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the family of Dr J J C Bradfield 2006
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Gift of the artist 2021
Ron Mueck (b. 1958), sculptor, first attracted widespread attention in 1997, when his poignant work Dead Dad was featured in the landmark exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Royal Academy, London and subsequently shown in Berlin and New York.
1 portrait in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2011
William Beckwith (Bill) McInnes (1889–1939), artist, was only fourteen when he began studying drawing under Frederick McCubbin at the National Gallery School in Melbourne, before moving to painting.
5 portraits in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2016
Purchased with funds provided by the Ian Potter Foundation 2008
Purchased with funds provided by Karen McLeod Adair and Anthony Adair 2004
Gift of Mrs Caroline Philippa Parker 2005. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Josonia Palaitis trained as an art teacher in Sydney in the early 1970s, and experimented with diverse painting styles before settling into the photorealist mode for which she became best known.
1 portrait in the collection
Purchased with funds provided by the Basil Bressler Bequest 2003
Michael Boddy (1934–2014), writer and actor, was born in England and educated at Cambridge before arriving in Australia as a 'ten quid migrant' in 1960.
2 portraits in the collection
Gift of Elizabeth Reid 2019
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2014
Gift of Judi Preston-Stanley 2013
Imelda Roche AO (b. 1934), with husband Bill, introduced the Nutri-Metics skin care range to Australia in 1968.
1 portrait in the collection
Commissioned 2003
Purchased 2021
William Edward (Bill) Harney (1895–1962), bushman and raconteur, spent his childhood in Charters Towers and Cairns and started working as a stockman and boundary rider at the age of twelve.
2 portraits in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Enid Hawkins 2003
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Trevor Jamieson (b. 1975), Pitjantjatjara/Nyungar actor, didgeridoo player, guitarist, singer, dancer and storyteller, grew up in the Goldfields region of Western Australia.
1 portrait in the collection
Robert James Lee (Bob) Hawke (1929-2019) moved with his family from South Australia to Perth in 1939.
9 portraits in the collection
For Tom Roberts - Australia's best nineteenth-century portrait painter - neither a proto-national portrait gallery nor more popular collections of portrait heads, were sufficient public celebrations for the notables of Australian history
Purchased 2001
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Enid Hawkins 2003
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
This 1910 portrait of Elizabeth Sarah (Lillie) Roberts by Tom Roberts was brought into the Gallery's collection with the assistance of the Acquisition Fund in 2013.
Gift of Coles Myer Ltd 2002. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Hilda Spong (1875-1955), actress, came to Australia with her family when she was thirteen.
1 portrait in the collection
The Circle of Friends Acquisition Fund for 2012 was dedicated to purchasing a portrait of David Malouf by Rick Amor.
Peter Elliott AM (1927–2014) was an obstetrician, gynaecologist and gynaecological oncologist as well as a significant art collector and patron.
6 portraits in the collection
Purchased 2018
David Naseby (1937–2022) was born in England and studied in the United Kingdom before coming to Australia in 1953.
8 portraits in the collection
This display celebrates 100 years of the Historic Memorials Collection and its role in commissioning portraits of parliamentary and judicial figures in Australia.
Philippe Mora (b. 1949), filmmaker, artist and writer, is the eldest son of artist Mirka Mora and restauranteur and gallery owner Georges Mora.
1 portrait in the collection
Mark Haworth-Booth explains why Bill Brandt is one of the most important British photographers of the Twentieth Century.
Vida Goldstein (1869-1949), activist, was the daughter of energetic social reformers.
1 portrait in the collection
The considered matching of artist to subject has produced an amazing collection of unique and original works in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery
Hardtmuth Lahm (1912-1981), commercial artist and cartoonist, came to Australia from Estonia as a sixteen-year-old.
1 portrait in the collection
Elizabeth Reid AO (b. 1942), adviser on women's and public health policy, lived from her teens in Canberra, where she gained a pioneering public service cadetship in 1960.
1 portrait in the collection
John Bradfield (1867-1943), engineer, was a key figure in the development of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and inner city transport network.
1 portrait in the collection
Known as the 'Kings of Disco', The Bee Gees have sold over 120 million records worldwide and are among the highest-selling musical artists in history.
1 portrait in the collection
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell KG GCMG PC (1792 –1878) was Secretary of State for War and the Colonies from 1839 to 1841 and served twice as Prime Minister of Great Britain, in 1846-1852 and 1865-1866.
1 portrait in the collection
Binem (Bill) Grunstein (1921-2013), garment manufacturer and artist, escaped the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941, having seen his parents and most of his family members die of typhus or disappear.
1 portrait in the collection
The votes are in and the National Portrait Gallery is pleased to announce The Honourable Bob Hawke savouring a strawberry milkshake by Harold David is the people’s choice for the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2018.
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.
The exhibition is selected from a national field of entries, reflecting the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects.
Rosalie Kunoth-Monks OAM (1937-2022), Arrernte and Anmatjere woman, Aboriginal activist, former actress and nun, was born at Artekerre soak on Utopia Cattle Station in the Northern Territory, the daughter of Allan and Ruby Kunoth.
2 portraits in the collection
Exploring the photographs of Martin Schoeller, Michael Desmond delves into the uneasy pact that exists between celebrity and the camera.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2005
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Robert Dessaix 2000
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Scott Redford discusses his dynamic portrait commission of motorcycling champion and 2008 Young Australian of the Year Casey Stoner.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of John McPhee 2018
Joanna Gilmour reflects on merging collections and challenging traditional assumptions around portraiture in WHO ARE YOU.
Nicholas Harding: 28 portraits features paintings of Robert Drewe, John Bell and Hugo Weaving alongside gorgeously coloured recent oil portraits, delicate gouaches and bold ink and charcoal drawings.
Adrian Rawlins (1939-2001), poet, performer and promoter, grew up in a Jewish household in Caulfield and St Kilda.
1 portrait in the collection
Vanity Fair Portraits traces the birth and evolution of photographic portraiture through the archives of Vanity Fair magazine.
Seventeen of Australia’s thirty prime ministers to date are represented in the contrasting sizes, moods and mediums of these portraits.
The Seekers formed in Melbourne in 1962 when jazz singer Judith Durham met Athol Guy, who was in a folk trio with Bruce Woodley and Keith Potger.
3 portraits in the collection
This exhibition traces the creative output of nearly 50 years by one of Australia's landmark living photographers.
Millicent Fanny Preston Stanley (1883–1955), politician and feminist, was born Millicent Stanley in Sydney in 1883, the daughter of a grocer named Augustine Stanley and his wife Frances (née Preston).
1 portrait in the collection
In 2020 the Annual Appeal was focussed on Sally Robinson's remarkable portrait of author Tim Winton.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2005
The Australian of the Year Awards have often provoked controversy about who is selected and whether their achievements are remarkable.
The Darling Portrait Prize is a biennial national prize for Australian portrait painting honouring the legacy of Mr L Gordon Darling AC CMG.
Christopher Chapman examines the battle of glamour vs. grunge which played out in the fashion and advertising of the 1990s.
Gift of Judith Durham, Athol Guy, Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley 2012. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Images for media use will be available from 8 March 2018.
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.
Joanna Gilmour reflects on 25 years of collecting at the National Portrait Gallery.
The exhibition will include works of art from the NPG Canberra's permanent collection with some inward loans and aims to highlight the achievements of notable Australians.
Michael Desmond explores the life of ballerina Irina Baranova through the portrait by Australian artist Jenny Sages.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2007
A new painting by Jiawei Shen captures the vision and resolve of the Gallery's founder, L. Gordon Darling AC CMG.
Magda Keaney talks with Montalbetti+Campbell about their photographic portrait of Australian astronaut Andy Thomas.
I agonized over the choice of four songs to take with me to the ABC Studios for Alex Sloan’s Canberra 666 afternoon program, a sort of iteration of the old BBC Desert Island Discs.
Australian photographer Karin Catt has shot across the spectrum of celebrity, her subjects including rock stars, world leaders and actors.
Bruce Petty's animated self portrait captures a life's journey compressed into a few minutes.
Celebrates the centenary of the first national art collection, the Historic Memorials Collection, housed at Australia's Parliament House.
How the National Portrait Gallery and its unique collection came to be
The Gallery protects your privacy, including as a result of your interaction with our website
Leo Schofield introduces the exhibition, Masters of fare: chefs, winemakers, providores.
Aimee Board chats to emerging photographer Charles Dennington.
Inga Walton sheds light on a portraiture collection usually only seen by students and teachers at Melbourne University.
As the National Portrait Gallery opens its exhibition of portrait and figurative work by veteran photographer Sam Haskins, the artist reflects on the highlights of his fifty-year career so far.
Sarah Engledow casts a judicious eye over portraits in the Victorian Bar’s Peter O’Callaghan QC Portrait Gallery.
Most well-regarded pictures of chickens show them dead. A reliable way to tell if a chicken in a painting is dead is to check if it’s hanging upside down, because unlike, say, cockatoos, chickens don’t practise inversion for enjoyment in life.
Australia's former Cultural Attache to the USA, Ron Ramsey, describes the mood at the opening week of the revitalised American National Portrait Gallery.
Dr. Sarah Engledow discovers the amazing life of Ms. Hilda Spong, little remembered star of the stage, who was captured in a portrait by Tom Roberts.
Sarah Engledow ponders the divergent legacies of Messrs Kendall and Lawson.
Pamela Gerrish Nunn explores New Zealand’s premium award for portraiture.
Peter Wilmoth’s boy-journalist toolkit for antagonising an Australian political giant.
Karen Vickery delights in a thespian thread of the Australian yarn.
Dr Christopher Chapman describes the experimental exhibition Portraits + Architecture
Sandra Bruce gazes on love and the portrait through Australian Love Stories’ multi-faceted prism.
Sir William Dobell painted the portraits of Sir Charles Lloyd Jones and Sir Hudson Fysh, who did much to promote the image of Australia in this country and abroad.
Meredith Hughes explores a key Portrait Gallery work, emerging into the infinite iterations of identity.
Alexandra Roginski reveals a forceful feminist figure in the colonial period’s slippery science, phrenology.
Vanity Fair Editor David Friend describes how the rebirth of the magazine sated our desire for access into the lives of celebrities and set the standard for the new era of portrait photography.
It’s a matter beyond dispute that in the entire history of Australian art, it’s Noel McKenna who’s painted the liveliest rendition of the head of a Chihuahua.
A toast to the acquisition of an unconventional new portrait of former Prime Minister, Stanley Melbourne Bruce.
Over the years the young Nicholas Harding got his hands on various mice and guinea pigs, but they served mainly to illustrate the concept of mortality.
Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2014 Prize.
Dr Sarah Engledow puts four gifts to the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection in context.
Sarah Engledow writes about Gordon and Marilyn Darling and their support for the National Portrait Gallery throughout its evolution.
Sarah Engledow explores the history of the prime ministers and artists featured in the exhibition.
Sarah Engledow looks at three decades of Nicholas Harding's portraiture.