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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.

Explore The Popular Pet Show

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

NPPP 2011 exhibition essay

Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2011 Prize.

The more things change...

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

Everybody, look serious

Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2014 Prize.

Some prime ministers

Sarah Engledow explores the history of the prime ministers and artists featured in the exhibition.

Arcadia: Sound of the sea

One night in the spring of 1970 in an old house in Whale Beach, north of Sydney, John Witzig, Albe Falzon and David Elfick put together the first issue of Tracks, playing Neil Young’s album Harvest over and over again as they pasted up galleys of type.

Ken Done

With a mum who was married to a tradie, you’d think it a fair chance that the baby Jesus would have grown up with a dog in the house.

Jude Rae

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.

Darren McDonald

The wild balancing act of McDonald’s home décor (is that there as a joke? where do I actually sit down? is this ironic or what? what a lovely photo of Darren and Robin in Europe!) is reflected in his own personality.

Robyn Sweaney

Robyn's parents had two terriers, Wuff and Snuff. In spite of Snuff’s ominous name and a couple of close shaves – once, he jumped out of a moving car, and another time, on a long road trip, he was accidentally left behind at a petrol station – he outlived Wuff.

Rick Amor: 21 Portraits

Sarah Engledow chronicles Rick Amor's work and accomplishments in this extensive essay in conjunction with the exhibition Rick Amor: 21 Portraits.

Nicholas Harding: 28 Portraits

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

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.

Graeme Drendel

I like talking about Drendel’s pictures as if they expressed dreams of my own.

Kristin Headlam

Basil grew into a speckled beauty – a long-legged leaper and an exceptionally vocal dog, with a great register of sounds, ascending in shock value from a whimper to a growl to a bark to a yelp that’s a violation of the ears.

William Robinson

Unique in the world, perhaps, is a bronze sculpture that fuses the age-old human portrait bronze tradition, and the later genre of the bronze pug figurine: that’d be William Robinson’s Self-portrait with pug.

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. 

Shen Jiawei

Shen Jiawei was born in China. During the Cultural Revolution he laboured in the Great Northern Wilderness, but even as he worked there, he gained recognition as an artist. 

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.

Davida Allen

Going around a gallery with a child, we point to a painting of a dog and brightly ask ‘What’s that?’ If they don’t say ‘A dog’, we tell them that’s what it is. We don’t say it’s a shape inscribed by an artist that’s popularly understood to signify a dog. That’d only serve to foster a smarty-pants.

Nicholas Harding

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. 

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. 

Janet Dawson

When soulmates Janet Dawson and Michael Boddy moved from Sydney to a property, Boddy was clear about why: ‘Our marriage is one long conversation - we moved to the bush so we could talk to each other without so many interruptions.’

Uncommon Australians

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

Tony Shaw, 2018

Commissioned with funds from the Patrick Corrigan Portrait Commission Series 2018

Jane’s conviction

Stand by your man

Look at moy!

Foxy ladies’ fame, friendship

Art Handlers' Award

The Art Handlers' Award for 2022 went to Weight of the Mind's Periapt, 2021 by Jane Allan.

Conversations with the artists

Exhibition curator Sarah Engledow, explores the creativity of the Popular Pet Show artists and their love for their animals.

Bern Emmerichs

Born: 1961, Melbourne
Works: Melbourne

Corporate Support

Our partners play a vital role in the expansion of the Gallery’s programs, exhibitions and the ongoing development of the collection.

Executive

National Portrait Gallery Director Bree Pickering leads the executive team.

A head for business and a heart for love

For love, not money

All at sea

Tiny token, big love

Annual Appeal

Intimacy

In experiencing intimacy the human mind wrestles with the impossible task of being as one with another. Sculptor Sam Jinks unites the textures of the human body and human emotion in these works addressing moments of intimacy.

Who is Lillie Roberts?

Talented wife for a talented husband

2022 Annual Appeal

In 2022 the Annual Appeal was focussed on Mayatjara by Robert Fielding, a series of 24 photographs of Elders of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara community.

2013-14 Acquisition Fund

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.

Portrait 50 hits the shelves

With contributions from Julia Gillard, Fiona Gruber, and Dr Karl James, the National Portrait Gallery’s 50th edition of Portrait has something for everyone.

2023 Annual Appeal

In 2023 the Annual Appeal was focussed on a work by one of Australia's best loved and most successful portrait painters, Judy Cassab AO CBE, depicting model, entrepreneur and deportment icon, June Dally-Watkins OAM.

Contact us

Find a contact at the National Portrait Gallery.

Grow the Portrait Gallery of Australia

The Portrait Gallery is calling for contributions to support in the acquisition of superb portraits for the national collection.

The 2023 National Photographic Portrait Prize

Shea Kirk’s portrait of friend and fellow-artist Emma Armstrong-Porter has won the 2023 National Photographic Portrait Prize.

Arcadia media information

Press releases and image downloads for media.

2015-17 Acquisition Fund

From 2015 to 2017 the Acquisition Fund was focussed on Reg Richardson AM by Mitch Cairns, a finalist in the Archibald Prize 2014, and a great example of minimalist portraiture.

2020 Annual Appeal

In 2020 the Annual Appeal was focussed on Sally Robinson's remarkable portrait of author Tim Winton.

Twenty new portraits marking Portrait Gallery’s twentieth birthday

To celebrate the National Portrait Gallery’s twentieth anniversary as an institution, twenty portraits of outstanding Australian individuals have been commissioned for the permanent collection. This is the largest undertaking for the Gallery’s commissioning program in its twenty-year existence.

Australian Love Stories

A major new exhibition celebrating love in all its guises. Opening 20 March 2021.

National Portrait Gallery unveils twenty new portrait commissions to celebrate twenty years

The National Portrait Gallery has unveiled twenty new portrait commissions of Australian leaders and individualists as part of its twentieth birthday celebrations in a new exhibition, 20/20: Celebrating twenty years with twenty new portrait commissions.

Portrait Donors

Finalists announced for National Photographic Portrait Prize

The National Portrait Gallery would like to congratulate the forty finalists for the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2019.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2018

Images for media use will be available from 8 March 2018.

NPPP 2009 exhibition essay

Dr Christopher Chapman, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2009 Prize.

So Fine

The National Portrait Gallery is pleased to announce its winter exhibition is So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history. It will open to the public from 29 June 2018.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2023

We encourage you to look, to feel, to think, to question and most importantly, to identify and connect.

So Fine

Ten women artists explore the possibilities of portraiture as a contemporary art form; and reinterpret and reimagine Australian history in the Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history.

Forum participants

Biographies of participants in the Writing lives, revealing lives forum.