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Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2004
Purchased with funds provided by Wayne Williams 2018
Stephen Page AO (b. 1965), Nunukul dancer and choreographer, has been artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre since 1991.
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
Recorded 1961
Purchased 2018
Professor Stephen Fitzgerald, Australia’s first Ambassador to China, traces the historical course from sino-australian cultural engagement to a maturing Australian identity.
Stephen Phillips talks to neurosurgeon Charlie Teo about his practice, perspectives and the anatomy of hope.
Stephen Valambras Graham traverses the intriguing socio-political terrain behind two iconic First Nations portraits of the 1850s.
Editor Stephen Phillips looks at the finalists' photographs through a judge's lens.
Stephen Zagala discusses Richard Avedon’s work from an Australian perspective.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Lyn Williams AM 2011
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Dalu Zhao 2011
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Mrs Lily Kahan 2006
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2015
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Mrs Lily Kahan 2017
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Angus and the arbiters talk (photo) shop for the National Photographic Portrait Prize.
Michael Desmond discusses Fred Williams' portraits of friends, artist Clifton Pugh, David Aspden and writer Stephen Murray-Smith, and the stylistic connections between his portraits and landscapes.
Gift of Robert Rosen 2012
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2004
Gift of the artist 2021. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program.
Purchased 2010
Creative kin
Gift of Stephen Scheding and Jim Berry 2015
Gift of the artist 1998. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2015
May Emmeline Wirth (1894–1978), circus performer, was once described as the ‘greatest lady bareback rider of all time’.
1 portrait in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010
Gift of the artist 2008
Paul Worstead (b. 1950) is a conceptual artist, poster maker, T-shirt and fabric designer.
2 portraits in the collection
Sage (b. 1963) was born in Wales and studied at the School of Documentary Photography in South Wales under magnum photographer David Hurn.
7 portraits in the collection
Peter Porter OAM (1929-2010), poet and critic, moved from Brisbane to London in 1951 at age 22.
2 portraits in the collection
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2013
Walter Preston, engraver and convict, came to New South Wales aboard the Guildford in 1812.
1 portrait in the collection
Beau Dean Riley Smith is a Wiradjuri and Gamillaraay man, born in Dubbo.
1 portrait in the collection
David Foster OAM (b. 1957), champion axeman, is the most successful competitor in the history of the sport of woodchopping.
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.
Nam Le (b. 1978), writer, came to Australia as a baby with his Vietnamese refugee parents.
1 portrait in the collection
Kristin Headlam's portrait of Chris Wallace-Crabbe was acquired with the support of the Circle of Friends in 2014.
Douglas Kirkland, photographer, was born in Canada and started his career on small newspapers there.
1 portrait in the collection
Steven Heathcote AM (b. 1964), dancer, is The Australian Ballet's longest-serving principal artist from 1987 to 2007.
1 portrait in the collection
Julian Kingma (b. 1968), photographer, began his career in 1988 as a cadet for the Herald newspaper in Melbourne, and later worked for the Sunday Age as Head Features Photographer.
11 portraits in the collection
A Yankunytjatjara man, Yami Lester OAM (1941–2017) was born at Walyatjata in the north of South Australia.
1 portrait in the collection
Purchased with funds provided by the Basil Bressler Bequest 2004
On this day eight hundred years ago at Runnymede near Windsor, King John signed Magna Carta.
Purchased 2014
Gift of the artist 2005. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Commissioned with funds provided by the Sid and Fiona Myer Family Foundation 2018
Gift of the artist 2005. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Tim Clark 2018
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 1999
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by Ross A Field 2008
Purchased 2001
Purchased 2019
Michele Aboud, commercial, fashion and portrait photographer, is a graduate of the Photographic College of London and UCLA.
1 portrait in the collection
Clem, George, David, Alfie and Russell Sands were members of one of Australia's most famous sporting families.
2 portraits in the collection
Clem, George, David, Alfie and Russell Sands were members of one of Australia's most famous sporting families.
2 portraits in the collection
Clem, George, David, Alfie and Russell Sands were members of one of Australia's most famous sporting families.
2 portraits in the collection
Clem, George, David, Alfie and Russell Sands were members of one of Australia's most famous sporting families.
2 portraits in the collection
Clem, George, David, Alfie and Russell Sands were members of one of Australia's most famous sporting families.
2 portraits in the collection
Gift of the artist 2008
Michael Zavros (b. 1974) graduated from Queensland College of Art with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 1996.
2 portraits in the collection
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
Hugh Ramsay, the fashion of Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, Peter Wegner's centenarian series, John and Elizabeth Gould's family connections, Karen Quinlan's top five portraits and more.
This exhibition focuses on exploring national and communal identity through sculptural production in Australia, from the early decades of settlement through to the present day
Gift of the artist 2020. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
The series 'David Moore: From Face to Face' was acquired as a gift of the artist and with financial assistance from Timothy Fairfax AC and L Gordon Darling AC CMG 2001
Australian photographer Karin Catt has photographed world leaders, a host of rock stars and Oscar-winning compatriots Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, and Cate Blanchett.
Purchased 2002
Australian photojournalist Stephen Dupont's Afghanistan project captures the human experience of a country in reconstruction.
David Gulpilil AM (1953-2021), actor and dancer, was a Yolngu man of the Mandhalpuyngu language group and was born near Maningrida in Arnhem Land.
5 portraits in the collection
Russell Page (1968–2002), choreographer, dancer and actor, was from the Nunukul (Noonuccal) people and the Munaldjali clan of the Yugambeh people of south-east Queensland.
5 portraits in the collection
The National Portrait Gallery is thrilled to be named the winner of the Museums Australasia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards in the category of exhibition major catalogue level B, for our publication So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history.
An interview with the photographer.
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.
Charles Henry Theodore Costantini (also Constantine, Constantini and Costantine) was a Paris-born surgeon of Italian descent who was twice transported to the Australian colonies in the 1820s.
1 portrait in the collection
Grace Carroll discusses the portrait of the late-eighteenth century gentleman pickpocket George Barrington.
Purchased 2010
In this exhibition Sydney based photographer Peter Brew-Bevan brings together an intimate collection of works that highlight his passion for the genre of portraiture over the last 10 years
Angus Trumble’s tribute to the late Right Honourable Malcolm Fraser.
The National Portrait Gallery would like to congratulate the forty finalists for the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2019.
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.
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.
Sarah Engledow casts a judicious eye over portraits in the Victorian Bar’s Peter O’Callaghan QC Portrait Gallery.
Christopher Chapman profiles Chris Lilley, actor and creator of Angry Boys.
In its second year at the National Portrait Gallery, and for the first time touring to other venues, the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2009 continues to present surprising perspectives on the nature of contemporary portrait photography.
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.
Commissioned with funds provided by the Sid and Fiona Myer Family Foundation 2018
Inga Walton delves into the bohemian group of artists and writers who used each other as muses and transformed British culture.
Australian photographer Karin Catt has shot across the spectrum of celebrity, her subjects including rock stars, world leaders and actors.
Charting a path from cockatiel to finch, Annette Twyman explores her family portraits and stories.
Death masks, post-mortem drawings and other spooky and disquieting portraits... Come and see how portraits of infamous Australians were used in the 19th century.
An interview with the photographer.
Patrick McCaughey explores a striking Boyd self portrait.
Penny Grist on motivation, method and melancholy in the portraiture of Darren McDonald.
John Zubrzycki meets Australian paint pioneer Jim Cobb.
NPPP judge Robert Cook provides irreverent insight into this year’s fare, and having to be a bit judgemental.
Dr Sarah Engledow writes about the larger-than-life Australian performance artist, Leigh Bowery.
Joanna Gilmour explores the life of a colonial portrait artist, writer and rogue Thomas Griffiths Wainewright.
Daniel Browning delves into Tracey Moffatt’s Some lads series, recently acquired in full by the National Portrait Gallery.
Pamela Gerrish Nunn explores New Zealand’s premium award for portraiture.
To accompany the exhibition Cecil Beaton: Portraits, held at the NPG in 2005, this article is drawn from Hugo Vickers's authorised biography, Cecil Beaton (1985).
Joanna Gilmour reflects on 25 years of collecting at the National Portrait Gallery.
The London-born son of an American painter, Augustus Earle ended up in Australia by accident in January 1825.
Joanna Gilmour explores photographic depictions of Aboriginal sportsmen including Lionel Rose, Dave Sands, Jerry Jerome and Douglas Nicholls.
Where do we draw a line between the personal and the historical? Although she died in Melbourne in 1975, when I was not quite eleven years old, I have the vividest memories of my maternal grandmother Helen Borthwick.
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.
One half of the team that was Eltham Films left scarcely a trace in the written historical record, but survives in a vivid portrait.
Sarah Engledow writes about Gordon and Marilyn Darling and their support for the National Portrait Gallery throughout its evolution.
Sarah Engledow chronicles Rick Amor's work and accomplishments in this extensive essay in conjunction with the exhibition Rick Amor: 21 Portraits.
Lesley Harding, Curator, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne explores Albert Tucker’s experience of World War II, his interests in the intersection between psychology and creativity, and their influence on his portrait making.