Grace Cossington Smith OBE (1892–1984) was a pioneer of modernist art in Australia.
1 portrait in the collection
George Case (life dates unknown) and his wife Grace Egerton (d. 1881), variety performers, evidently made several successful tours of Australia in the 1860s and 1870s, although the precise dates of their visits are unknown.
1 portrait in the collection
Joshua Smith studied sculpture with Rayner Hoff and took classes in drawing and painting at Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School.
5 portraits in the collection
Dick Smith (b. 1944), businessman, aviator, film-maker and explorer, developed interests in radio and the bush as a boy.
2 portraits in the collection
Eric Smith (1919-2017), painter, was born in Brunswick, Melbourne, and trained in commercial art at the Brunswick Technical College before serving in the army during World War 2.
6 portraits in the collection
Julian Smith, surgeon and photographer, came to Australia with his family from England at the age of three.
2 portraits in the collection
Tommy Smith (1916-1998), racehorse trainer, was born at Jembaicumbene near Braidwood, NSW.
2 portraits in the collection
David Smith, painter, draughtsman, printmaker and teacher, was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, where he attended the Technical School and the Lowestoft and Norwich Schools of Art.
1 portrait in the collection
Bernard Smith (1916-2011) was one of Australia's most important twentieth-century art historians and an influential cultural commentator.
2 portraits in the collection
Sydney Ure Smith, publisher, was responsible for the establishment of Art in Australia in 1916-1942 and the journals The Home and Australian National Journal.
1 portrait in the collection
Sir Gerard Smith (1839-1920), governor, was educated at Eton before purchasing a commission as an ensign and lieutenant in the Scots Fusilier Regiment of Foot Guards, with whom he served in Canada in 1863-1864.
1 portrait in the collection
Robin Smith grew up in rural New Zealand, and studied arts and fine arts at Canterbury University before beginning to write and illustrate adventure and natural history stories.
1 portrait in the collection
Heide Smith took up photography as a young girl in Germany in 1948, when her uncle gave her a Zeiss Ikon camera.
3 portraits in the collection
Shirley 'Mum Shirl' Smith AO OBE (1921–1998), humanitarian, was a Wiradjuri woman.
1 portrait in the collection
Peter Purves Smith (1912–1949), artist, went to Geelong Grammar with his lifelong friend Russell Drysdale.
2 portraits in the collection
Sir Charles Kingsford Smith MC AFC (1897- last seen 1935) and Captain Charles Ulm (1898-last seen 1934) together founded Australian National Airlines.
3 portraits in the collection
John Firth-Smith (b. 1943) is a Sydney abstract painter. In the early 1960s he won a number of 'young artist' prizes for his paintings of yachts on Sydney Harbour, but by 1968 his work was becoming increasingly abstract, featuring large fields of opaque colour.
2 portraits in the collection
Stephen Murray-Smith (1922-1988), writer and editor, was educated at Geelong Grammar and the University of Melbourne before serving in New Guinea during World War 2.
1 portrait in the collection
John Raphael Smith worked in various drapery establishments and painted miniatures before turning to engraving in London.
1 portrait in the collection
Harry Hudson (1907-1974) was a Melbourne-based painter. His work was included in a number of group exhibitions at the Bridget McDonnell Gallery, Carlton in the 1980s along with those of such notable artists as Roland Wakelin, Grace Cossington-Smith and James Gleeson.
1 portrait in the collection
Ethel Anderson (née Mason, 1883-1958), writer and artist, was an important figure in the Sydney modern art scene of the 1920s and 30s.
2 portraits in the collection
Stella Bowen, painter and writer, grew up in Adelaide, where she studied with Margaret Preston.
1 portrait in the collection
Roy de Maistre (Roi (Leroy) de Mestre) CBE (1894-1968), painter, studied music at the Sydney Conservatorium, but was also a student at the RAS School with Dattilo Rubbo and later the Sydney Art School with Julian Ashton.
1 portrait in the collection
Anthony Dattilo Rubbo (1870-1955) was born in Naples and received classical art training in Italy.
1 portrait in the collection
Drusilla Modjeska (b. 1946), writer, feminist and academic, was born in England and moved to Australia in 1971 after several years in Papua New Guinea.
1 portrait in the collection
George Lambert (1873–1930), artist, was born in St Petersburg and lived in Germany and England before coming to Australia with his family at the age of fourteen.
7 portraits in the collection
Frank McIlwraith was the London representative for the Australian periodical Smith's Weekly in the late 1930s.
1 portrait in the collection
Jean Appleton (1911–2003), painter and art teacher, studied at the East Sydney Technical College, completing a diploma in drawing and illustration in 1932.
2 portraits in the collection
Ruskin was a Sydney photographic business, located at 159 O'Sullivans Road, Rose Bay.
1 portrait in the collection
Lady Maisie Drysdale (1915–2001), children's librarian and artists' muse, developed an interest in art as a child, and attended both the University of Melbourne and George Bell's art school.
1 portrait in the collection
George Case (life dates unknown) and his wife Grace Egerton (d. 1881), variety performers, made several successful tours of Australia in the 1860s and 1870s, although the precise dates of their visits are unknown.
1 portrait in the collection
Francis Lymburner (1916-1972) was a Queensland-born artist who was educated at Brisbane Grammar and took art classes at Brisbane Technical College.
2 portraits in the collection
George Moore (1923-2008), champion jockey, was born in Mackay, Qld and was apprenticed in Brisbane in 1938.
1 portrait in the collection
Peter Nicholson (b. 1950), poet and author, grew up in Sydney. He published his first volume of poetry and narrative, A Temporary Grace, in 1991.
3 portraits in the collection
Les Darcy (1895-1917), boxer, was one of Australia's earliest sporting heroes.
3 portraits in the collection
George Finey, one of Australia's best-known cartoonists, was born in Auckland and was selling drawings to local newspapers by the time he was 14.
1 portrait in the collection
Alec Murray was a photographer whose Alec Murray's Album: Personalities of Australia was published by Sydney Ure Smith in about 1948.
1 portrait in the collection
Little is known of John Chapman, who engraved fine allegorical subjects after the designs of J Smith and Richard Corbould and worked closely with Thomas Macklin on his Shakespeare series.
2 portraits in the collection
Cyril Henschke (1924-1979), winemaker, was a member of a well-established Barossa winemaking family.
1 portrait in the collection
Gwen Pratt FRAS (b.1917) is a traditional painter and portraitist in oil, watercolour and pastel.
1 portrait in the collection
Manning Clark AC (1915–1991), historian, lectured at the University of Melbourne from 1944 to 1949, when became Foundation Professor of History at Canberra University College.
5 portraits in the collection
Sir William Dobell (1899–1970), painter, studied art and was apprentice to an architect in Sydney before leaving Australia for Europe in 1929.
10 portraits in the collection
Kelvin Kong is a Worimi doctor who grew up in Port Stephens, New South Wales.
1 portrait in the collection
Enid Fleming was a pupil of Rayner Hoff's at the East Sydney Technical College at the time these works were made (Hoff and several of his other students were working on the Anzac Memorial at the time).
2 portraits in the collection
Danelle Bergstrom (b. 1957) was born in Sydney. She studied art and art education at the Julian Ashton school (1974-1979) and at Alexander Mackie CAE.
2 portraits in the collection
Alex Dimitriades (b. 1973), actor, grew up in Earlwood, Sydney, the son of first-generation Greek immigrants.
1 portrait in the collection
Marilyn Kong is a Worimi doctor who grew up in Port Stephens, New South Wales.
1 portrait 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
Marion Halligan AM (b. 1940) is a novelist, short story writer, reviewer and essayist.
1 portrait in the collection
Marlene Kong is a Worimi doctor who grew up in Port Stephens, New South Wales.
1 portrait in the collection
Paul Haefliger (1914-1982) trained in Sydney and then in London with Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler.
1 portrait in the collection
Bruce Dawe AO (1930-2020), poet and teacher, was born in Fitzroy and worked as a labourer, clerk, sawmill hand, farmhand and postman before joining the RAAF in 1959.
1 portrait in the collection
Charles Ulm (1898-1934) began work as a clerk in a stockbroking office after he left school, but enlisted under a false identity in the 1st Battalion of the AIF just before his 16th birthday.
2 portraits in the collection
Roland Wakelin was born in New Zealand and studied at the RAS school in Sydney under Dattilo Rubbo from 1912 to 1914.
1 portrait in the collection
Sister Mary Brady OP (1922-2014), born in Tamworth, is a self-taught painter, though she did receive critiques from Joshua Smith and Norman Carter.
1 portrait in the collection
Robert Drewe (b. 1943), author, grew up in Perth, where he worked as a junior reporter with the West Australian from 1961 to 1964.
1 portrait in the collection
William Edwin 'Wep' Pidgeon, cartoonist, illustrator and painter was born in Paddington and studied art at the JS Watkins School and East Sydney Technical College.
2 portraits in the collection
Irish-born James Horan (b. 1976) is an editorial and advertising photographer whose many clients include banks, hotel chains, medical supply companies, museums and charities such as The Salvos and The Smith Family.
1 portrait in the collection
Theresa Byrnes (b. 1969) is a painter, writer and performance artist who first exhibited her paintings in 1986 at the age of sixteen.
1 portrait in the collection
Hera Roberts (1892-1969) was a painter, illustrator, designer, commercial artist and milliner.
1 portrait in the collection
Gary Catalano (1947-2002), poet and critic, was educated at Sydney’s Trinity Grammar and worked in a variety of jobs before a series of Australia Council grants in the late 1970s enabled him to devote himself full-time to writing.
3 portraits in the collection
Adrian Feint (1894-1971) studied at the Sydney Art School with Julian Ashton after having served in the AIF in France and Belgium in World War I, during which he was praised for gallantry.
1 portrait 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
Born in Sydney, Garry Shead studied at the National Art School in 1961-2.
3 portraits in the collection
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
Colin Wills (1906–1965), journalist and author, was born in Toowoomba, Queensland and grew up in Sydney.
1 portrait in the collection
Samuel 'Sammy' Woods (1867-1931), cricketer, is one of only five men to have played Tests for both Australia and England.
1 portrait in the collection
Sir Colin Syme AK (1903-1986) was chairman of BHP from 1952 to1971. Born in Perth, he attended Scotch College in Claremont, the universities of Perth and Melbourne and the University of New South Wales before becoming a solicitor in the Melbourne firm of Hedderwick, Fookes and Alston in 1923.
1 portrait in the collection
Sir Russell Drysdale AC (1912-1981), painter, developed eye trouble in 1929, and had to leave boarding school for the first of many eye treatments which left him fearful of total blindness.
6 portraits in the collection
Robert Adamson (b. 1943), poet, divided his childhood between Neutral Bay and the Hawkesbury River, where his grandfather lived.
2 portraits in the collection
Mervyn Horton AM (1917-1983), editor, art writer and entrepreneur, founded the journal Art and Australia in 1963 and edited it until his death in 1983.
1 portrait in the collection
Thomas Purves (1909-1969), known as Tam, founded the Australian Galleries in Smith Street, Collingwood, Melbourne with his wife Anne in 1956.
1 portrait in the collection
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), acknowledged as one of the world's great portraitists, was master of portraits in the 'Grand Manner', replete with moral and heroic symbolism.
3 portraits in the collection
Roderick Shaw (1915-1992) is perhaps best known for his worker paintings of the social realist school, such as Cable Layers (in the Art Gallery of NSW).
2 portraits in the collection
Geoffrey Dutton AO (1922–1998) was a prodigious writer and editor whose published works comprise poetry, novels, children's books, biographies, art history and literary criticism.
1 portrait in the collection
Gai Waterhouse AO, thoroughbred racehorse trainer, is the daughter of legendary trainer Tommy Smith.
1 portrait in the collection
William H. Bardwell, photographer, worked at various premises in Ballarat from 1858 until 1895.
1 portrait in the collection
Of Polish/Ukrainian descent, Peter Skrzynecki was born in 1945 in Germany and came to Australia with his parents in 1949.
1 portrait in the collection
Sigrid Thornton AO (b. 1959), actor, has been a household name since her performance in the box-office hit The Man from Snowy River in 1981.
1 portrait in the collection
Jan Senbergs (b. 1939) came to Australia from Latvia in 1950. He studied at the Melbourne School of Printing and Graphic Arts, where he was influenced by Leonard French.
2 portraits in the collection
Brian Fitzpatrick (1905-1965) was educated at state schools in regional Victoria and Melbourne before gaining his BA from Melbourne University in 1925.
1 portrait in the collection
Steve Irwin (1962-2006) achieved international fame as the 'Crocodile Hunter'.
1 portrait in the collection
Judith Wright (1915–2000), poet, conservationist and Aboriginal land rights campaigner, was born at Thalgaroch Station, near Armidale, NSW, into a pastoralist family whose origins go back to the first settlement in the Hunter Valley in the 1820s.
3 portraits in the collection
Francis Henry Critchley Hinder (1906-1992) was a pioneer of abstract art in Australia.
18 portraits in the collection
Charles Haddon Chambers (1860-1921), playwright and dramatist, grew up in Sydney.
1 portrait in the collection
Rodney Hall OAM (b. 1935), writer, came to Australia in 1947 and settled in Brisbane.
2 portraits in the collection
Justin O'Brien (1917-1996) was one of the major Australian artists of his generation.
3 portraits in the collection
Sir Charles Lloyd Jones (1878-1958), merchant and arts patron, grew up in Sydney, where he studied at Julian Ashton's art school in 1895.
1 portrait in the collection
Hugo Weaving AO (b. 1960), actor, spent his childhood in England, Australia and South Africa before returning to live in Australia in 1976.
1 portrait in the collection
Peter Garrett AM (b. 1953), musician, environmental and social activist, and former politician, is the lead singer of the band Midnight Oil, which originated in Sydney's northern beaches in the mid-1970s.
12 portraits in the collection
Sir Rupert ‘Dick’ Hamer AC KCMG (1916-2004) was premier of Victoria from 1972 to 1981.
1 portrait in the collection
Sir Robert Gibson GBE (1863-1934) trained in design and drafting in Glasgow, where he began work as a designer at an iron company; he soon became manager of its London office.
1 portrait in the collection
Karen Quinlan AM took up her appointment as Director of the National Portrait Gallery in December 2018. Karen commenced her curatorial career in 1994 at National Gallery of Victoria before becoming Curator of Bendigo Art Gallery in 1996, and the Director of Bendigo Art Gallery from 2000 until 2018. Karen was a Professor of Practice and previously Director of the La Trobe Art Institute La Trobe University, a former Trustee of the State Library of Victoria, Board Member and former Chair of the Public Galleries Association of Victoria.
The ‘first Australian first-class cricket team to tour England and North America’ was in fact the second Australian cricket side to contest matches internationally (a team of Indigenous players having done so in 1868), but it is considered the first official national representative team to tour overseas.
1 portrait in the collection
Vali Myers (1930-2003) artist, vagabond and agitator, was born near Box Hill and moved to Melbourne at the age of eleven.
1 portrait in the collection
Margel Hinder AM (née Harris) (1906-1995), sculptor, trained in Buffalo and Boston in the 1920s.
1 portrait in the collection
Jill Ker Conway AC (1934-2018), academic, writer and company director, was born in Hillston in western New South Wales and spent her early years on her father's sheep station, Coorain, which was so isolated that she was seven years old before she saw another girl.
1 portrait in the collection
Jason Yat-Sen Li (b. 1972) was born to parents who came to Australia from China in 1959.
1 portrait in the collection
Nancy Menetrey (née Wilkinson) was born in Sydney in 1924. After serving with the Australian Women's Land Army, formed during the Second World War to address labour shortages in the agricultural sector, she travelled overseas in the early 1950s, living and working in London for a number of years.
1 portrait in the collection
Frank Hurley (1885-1962), photographer, first made his name on Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-14.
2 portraits 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
Gilbert Eric Douglas (1902-1970), pilot and air force officer, took part in Sir Douglas Mawson's British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE) of 1929-1931.
1 portrait in the collection
Nancy Bird Walton AO OBE (1915–2009), aviatrix, decided she wanted to be a pilot when, at age eight, she saw a plane make an emergency landing on a beach near her home.
2 portraits in the collection
Sir Douglas Frank Hewson Packer KBE (1906-1974), media proprietor, grew up in Sydney and became a cadet journalist on the Daily Guardian, owned by his father RC Packer, in 1923.
2 portraits in the collection
RM (Reginald Murray) Williams AO CBE (1908-2003), saddlery, boot and clothing manufacturer, miner and author, moved to Adelaide from his birthplace near the Flinders Rangers when he was 10.
1 portrait in the collection
Thomas Wentworth (Tom) Wills (1836–1880), is popularly thought of as the co-inventor of Australian Rules football.
2 portraits in the collection
David Unaipon (1872-1967) writer, public speaker and inventor, was a Ngarrindjeri man, fourth of nine children of the evangelist James Ngunaitponi and his wife Nymbulda, both of whom were Yaraldi speakers.
1 portrait in the collection
Percy Leason, artist, illustrator and cartoonist, grew up in Victoria's Wimmera region and trained in the rudiments of art in Nhill.
1 portrait in the collection
