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Ryan Presley: Paradise won

Marri Ngarr artist Ryan Presley's site-specific commission Paradise won is prominently positioned at the Gallery’s entrance. This ambitious new work invites conversations about the ongoing legacies of colonisation and celebrates First Nations survival and autonomy.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2023

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.

Glenn Murcutt

Recorded 2017

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022

Let’s look closely at the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022 together! For students and family groups.

Téa-Anna Parvathy Murrin – Australian cultural identity

The Quarry

Christopher Bassi

Known for his representational painting, Meriam and Yupungathi man Christopher Bassi, based in Meanjin/Brisbane, addresses issues surrounding cultural identity, alternative genealogies and colonial legacies.

Luther Cora

Yeah, so it's my daughter. So, I shot this last year, I think on the Gold Coast, we had a little lockdown period, couple of lockdown period.

Portrait story

Photographer Polly Borland on capturing Queen Elizabeth II.

Love my way

Inga Walton delves into the bohemian group of artists and writers who used each other as muses and transformed British culture.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022

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.

Little Darlings Youth Portrait Prize 2022

Little Darlings is for primary and secondary students, with four separate categories across Kindergarten to Year 12. Responding to the theme ‘identity’, students painted, drew, photographed, printed or combined all of these to make their portrait.

Polly Borland on Queen Elizabeth II

Recorded 2017

Mr. Zee

Flora and Fauna, Giara: White Cockatoo

Birds of a feather

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

Alter ego

Tom Fryer surveys the twentieth-century architectural project, and finds representation and the portrait were integral elements.

Dame Helen Blaxland, 1986

Gift of Danina Dupain Anderson 2021. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.

Prince Charles Edward Stuart

Mother’s muse

Inga Walton traces the poignant path of photographer Polixeni Papapetrou, revealed in the NGV’s summer retrospective.

The right note

Marian Anderson’s glorious voice thrust her into stardom, and a more reluctant role as American civil rights pioneer.

A spectral sentience

Aimee Board reveals method, motivation and mortality in the portraiture of Rod McNicol.

Petal to the mettle

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

Seduce, Amuse, Entertain

Michael Desmond, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2007 Prize.

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.

Pamela See (Xue Mei-Ling)

Born: 1979, Brisbane
Works: Brisbane

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.

Through thick and thin

Sarah Engledow likes the manifold mediums of Nicholas Harding’s portraiture.

Nicholas Harding: 28 Portraits

Sarah Engledow looks at three decades of Nicholas Harding's portraiture.

The more things change...

Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2017 Prize.

Angkor Wat

Nothing quite prepares the first-time visitor to Cambodia for the scale and grandeur of the monuments of the ancient Khmer civilisation of Angkor.

Noel McKenna

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.

Lucy Culliton

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.

Anna Culliton

Anna Culliton never had a colouring-in book when she was little. Her parents –Tony, a filmmaker, and Stephanie, a painter – wouldn’t let her have one. Instead, they insisted on her drawing her own pictures to colour-in. 

Explore The Popular Pet Show

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

Bonfire of the vanities

Australian Galleries Director Stuart Purves tells the story of two portraits by John Brack.

Uncommon Australians

Sarah Engledow writes about Gordon and Marilyn Darling and their support for the National Portrait Gallery throughout its evolution.

Robert Brown, c. 1835

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2014

The 'I' in Indigenous art

Jane Raffan examines unique styles of Indigenous portraiture that challenge traditional Western concepts of the artform.

First Ladies

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

Big bouquet of Blackmans

Dr. Sarah Engledow explores the context surrounding Charles Blackman's portrait of Judith Wright, Jack McKinney and their daughter Meredith.

Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, c. 1890

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2013

Aborigines at Oyster Cove, Tasmania, 1858 (printed 1890s)

Purchased 2011

Sir Joseph Banks, c. 1788

Purchased 2010

Home and away

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.

Of human clay

The first collaborative commission has arrived. It's a self portrait, it's ceramic and it's from Hermannsburg.

Joseph Dalton Hooker, c. 1880s

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by L Gordon Darling AC CMG 2009

Gladys Moncrieff, 1920s

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Sally Douglas 2009

Moving in creative circles

Harold Cazneaux's portraits of influential Sydneysiders included Margaret Preston and Ethel Turner, both important figures in the development of ideas about Australian identity and culture.

Sir Charles Lloyd Jones, 1951

Gift of the Simpson family in memory of Caroline Simpson OAM 2008. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.

Gladys Moncrieff album,

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2008

Seduce Amuse Entertain

Michael Desmond profiles a handful of the entrants in first National Photographic Portrait Prize and notes emerging themes and categories.

Pre-Raphaelite Profile

In 2006 the National Portrait Gallery acquired a splendid portrait of Victoria's first governor, Lieutenant Governor Charles Joseph La Trobe by Thomas Woolner.

Hyperversity

Dr Sarah Engledow writes about the larger-than-life Australian performance artist, Leigh Bowery.

Modern Australian Women

Close contemporaries, Thea Proctor, Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith were frequently sources of inspiration and irritation to each other. 

Nobel and his prize

To complement the exhibition Australians and the Nobel Prize, Jennifer Gason gives us a sense of the proceedings that occur during the award ceremony.

Golden Jubilee

Polly Borland's photograph of The Queen was commissioned by Buckingham Palace as part of a series of high profile celebrations to mark the Golden Jubilee.

HM Queen Elizabeth II, 2001

Purchased 2002

Carma, 2019