Search / alexander 20macleay

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.

Painter John Brack with Professor Alex Mitchell and Sir Garfield Barwick, c. 1977

Gift of the Jozef Vissel 2015

Promise Fulfilled

The life and achievements of Sir Edward Holden, who is represented in the portrait collection by a bust created by Leslie Bowles.

Reflections on castles

Andrew Sayers describes the unique characteristics of the international band of portrait galleries.

Annual Appeal

Sir Thomas Gore-Browne, 1864

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2018

Poets' Portraits

The Portrait Gallery's paintings of two poets, Les Murray and Peter Porter, demonstrate two very different artists' responses to the challenge of representing more than usually sensitive and imaginative men.

Earth to earth

Dr Sarah Engledow discusses the recent gift of works by David Campbell.

Expect the unexpected

Joanna Gilmour revels in accidental artist Charles Rodius’ nineteenth century renderings of Indigenous peoples.

More cash than dash

Joanna Gilmour describes how colonial portraitists found the perfect market among social status seeking Sydneysiders.

School portraits

Inga Walton sheds light on a portraiture collection usually only seen by students and teachers at Melbourne University.

Public hanging

As a convict Thomas Bock was required to sketch executed murders for science; as a free man, fashionable society portraits.

Hyperversity

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

The Rothschilds, the Montefiores, and the Victorian Gold Rush

Some years ago my colleague Andrea Wolk Rager and I spent several days in the darkened basement of a Rothschild Bank, inspecting every one of the nearly 700 autochromes created immediately before World War I by the youthful Lionel de Rothschild.

The Lawrence lustre

Angus Trumble salutes the glorious portraiture of Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Snap decisions

NPPP judge Robert Cook provides irreverent insight into this year’s fare, and having to be a bit judgemental.