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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.

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General information

Robert, Lindy, Grant

Immediately, there was a crackle

It's Complicated

A meeting of minds

EY Principal sponsor

Partners

Support your Portrait Gallery

We are grateful to our supporters who help us care for, exhibit and study the Gallery's Collection and to offer programs that bring our portraits to life.

Convict love token from J. Waldon, 1832

To coin a (farewell) phrase

A penny for their thoughts

The vigil, 2011 by Anthony Anderton

Anthony Anderton

NPPP 2012 learning resource

An interview with the photographer.

Thomas Archbold, Durham, 1826 by John Dempsey

Street fare

General content

The late Georgian and early Victorian working classes often bought their food in ale-houses, chop-houses and ‘penny pie shops’, or purchased their meals day after day in the streets.

Kangaroos, 2007 by Davida Allen

Davida Allen

Explore The Popular Pet Show

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.

Tim Fairfax AC

Tim Fairfax, 2018

by Russell Shakespeare

General content

Commissioned with funds provided by The Calvert-Jones Foundation 2018

Self portrait with pug, 2009 by William Robinson
QUT Art Collection
Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by William Robinson, 2015

William Robinson

Explore The Popular Pet Show

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.

Mal Meninga

Mal Meninga, 2018

by Peter Hudson

General content

Commissioned with funds provided by Maliganis Edwards Johnson and Alan Dodge AM 2018

Marilyn Ball, Albatross, 2018 (detail) by Linde Ivimey

So Fine

Archived media releases 2018

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.

Marilyn Ball, Albatross, 2018 (detail) by Linde Ivimey

So Fine

Archived media releases 2018

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.

Bathing woman, Bridlington, c.1825 by John Dempsey

Allow me to introduce...

General content

These full-length figures in watercolour, gouache and pencil date mostly from the 1820s, and almost all come from the collection of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart.

Li Cunxin

Twenty new portraits marking Portrait Gallery’s twentieth birthday

Archived media releases 2018

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.

Alab ng puso (Fire in the heart), 2010 by Alfredo Esquillo Jr

Alfredo Esquillo Jr

by Patrick D. Flores

Born in Manila in 1972, Alfredo Esquillo Jr majored in painting at University of Santo Thomas.

Our only concern is the void, 2013 video: 12 minutes

Macquarie Digital Portraiture Award media information

Archived media releases 2013

The National Portrait Gallery recently announced the finalists for the Macquarie Digital Portraiture Award 2013.

Ngalim-Ngalimbooroo Ngagenybe

Presenting… Shirley Purdie’s Ngalim-Ngalimbooroo Ngagenybe

Wednesday 27 May 2020

Archived media releases 2020

The National Portrait Gallery this week launches an online exhibition of Shirley Purdie’s remarkable self-portrait Ngalim-Ngalimbooroo Ngagenybe to coincide with Reconciliation Week.

© National Portrait Gallery 2022
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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

This website comprises and contains copyrighted materials and works. Copyright in all materials and/or works comprising or contained within this website remains with the National Portrait Gallery and other copyright owners as specified.

The National Portrait Gallery respects the artistic and intellectual property rights of others. The use of images of works of art reproduced on this website and all other content may be restricted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Requests for a reproduction of a work of art or other content can be made through a Reproduction request. For further information please contact NPG Copyright.

The National Portrait Gallery is an Australian Government Agency