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Purchased 2001
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2001
Impressions: Painting light and life presents portraits by, and of, artists at the heart of Australian impressionism including Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin.
Sarah Engledow is seduced by the portraits and the connections between the artists and their subjects in the exhibition Impressions: Painting light and life.
Australian artist, Nora Heysen, discusses her childhood and the development of her career.
Nora Heysen, AM (1911-2003), fourth child of South Australian landscape painter Sir Hans Heysen, grew up in Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills.
9 portraits in the collection
Recorded 1965
Purchased 1999
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2001
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2001
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2001
Gift of Patrick Corrigan AM 2004. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2012
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of June Lahm 2015
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the family in memory of Penne Hackforth-Jones 2014
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 1999. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Andrew Sayers asks whether a portrait can truly be the examination of a life.
National Portrait Gallery director Karen Quinlan AM nominates her quintet of favourites from the collection, with early twentieth-century ‘selfies’ filling the roster.
If music be the food of love
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2008
Art, war, scandal
Hilda Spong (1875-1955), actress, came to Australia with her family when she was thirteen.
1 portrait in the collection
Featuring 130 works across painting, film, photography, screen printing, sculpture, and then some – it explores our inner worlds, outer selves, intimacy, isolation, celebrity and more.
Albert Henry Fullwood (1863-1930), artist, trained in art in his native Birmingham before moving to Sydney in 1883, aged 20.
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
Gift of Denis Savill 2017. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Purchased 2009
Percy Spence, born in Balmain, grew up in Fiji and began art classes in Sydney in about 1888.
1 portrait in the collection
Gift of Gerard Vaughan 2001
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
Robert Hughes Black ED MD DTM&H Dip Anth FRACP (1917-1988) was a world authority on malaria and Professor of Tropical Medicine in the Commonwealth Institute of Health, University of Sydney, for twenty years.
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
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2001
H. Walter Barnett (1862-1934) was a leading portrait photographer of the late Victorian, Edwardian and interwar periods.
12 portraits in the collection
Gift of Grietje Croll in memory of her late husband Robert Devereaux Croll and with the endorsement of his daughter Helen Croll 2013. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Purchased 2008
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
Purchased with funds provided by the Ian Potter Foundation 2008
An examination of the life and times of George Lambert through the gesture and pose in his self portrait.
Harold Parker (1873-1962), sculptor, came to Brisbane with his English parents as a three-year old.
1 portrait in the collection
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
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.
5 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
Dr Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM (b. 1934), choreographer, teacher and performer, was born in Adelaide and trained in classical ballet and modern dance with Nora Stewart.
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
Hardtmuth Lahm (1912-1981), commercial artist and cartoonist, came to Australia from Estonia as a sixteen-year-old.
1 portrait in the collection
'I have just been to my dressing case to take a peep at you.
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.
9 portraits in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Lin Bloomfield 2017
In Persuasion (1818), a long walk on a fine autumn day affords Anne Elliot an opportunity to ruminate wistfully and at great length upon declining happiness, youth and hope.
Peter Jeffrey trips the hound nostalgic.
Former NPG Director, Andrew Sayers describes the 1922 Self-portrait with Gladioli by George Lambert.
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.
This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits in Australia, from the colonial period to the present
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
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.
Pat Corrigan's generous gift of 100 photographic portraits by Greg Weight.
Jude Rae’s high reputation rests on her austere, cerebral still lifes of gas canisters, electric jugs and jars, which she groups and rearranges for paintings that catch their difficult curves and reflections. Her self-portrait’s likewise thoughtfully composed.
First Ladies profiles women who have achieved noteworthy firsts over the past 100 years.
The National Portrait Gallery acquired the self-portrait by Grace Cossington Smith in 2003.
Studio: Australian Painters Photographed by R. Ian Lloyd presents 61 of some of Australia’s most respected and significant painters working in the studio environment.
Bess Norriss Tait created miniature watercolour portraits full of character and life.
Australian character on the market by Jane Raffan.
The exhibition Depth of Field displays a selection of portrait photographs that reflect the strength and diversity of Australian achievement.
Gallery directors Karen Quinlan and Tony Ellwood talk to Penelope Grist about the NPG and NGV collaborative exhibition, Who Are You: Australian Portraiture.
In his speech launching the new National Portrait Gallery building on 3 December 2008, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd set the Gallery in a national and historical context.
Christopher Chapman highlights the inaugural hang of the new National Portrait Gallery building which opened in December 2008.
Penelope Grist finds inspiration in pioneering New Zealand artist, Frances Hodgkins.
Sharon Peoples contemplates costumes and the construction of identity.
Karl James gives short shrift to doubts about the profile of General Sir John Monash.
Archie 100 curator (and detective) Natalie Wilson’s nationwide search for Archibald portraits unearthed the fascinating stories behind some long-lost treasures.
Jean Appleton’s 1965 self portrait makes a fine addition to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection writes Joanna Gilmour.
Jane Raffan investigates auction sales of self portraits nationally and internationally.
Sarah Engledow ponders the divergent legacies of Messrs Kendall and Lawson.
One half of the team that was Eltham Films left scarcely a trace in the written historical record, but survives in a vivid portrait.
Dr Anne Sanders NPG Curatorial Researcher investigated the lives of the pioneering psychologists whose portraits are featured in Inner Worlds.