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Melissa 'Missy' Higgins (b. 1983), singer/songwriter, began singing in her early teens, falsifying her age to get into clubs to play with her brother's jazz combo.
1 portrait in the collection
Florence Austral (1892–1968), operatic soprano, achieved international renown during the 1920s.
1 portrait in the collection
Reinis Zusters studied art briefly in Germany before arriving in Australia as a Latvian refugee in 1950.
2 portraits in the collection
Vali Myers (1930-2003) artist, vagabond and agitator, was born near Box Hill and moved to Melbourne at the age of eleven.
1 portrait in the collection
Joseph Banks KCB (1743-1820), naturalist, grew up on his father's Lincolnshire estate, Revesby, but his lifelong interest in botany developed at Eton and Oxford.
13 portraits in the collection
Jill Ker Conway AC (1934-2018), academic, writer and company director, was born in Hillston in western New South Wales and spent her early years on her father's sheep station, Coorain, which was so isolated that she was seven years old before she saw another girl.
1 portrait in the collection
Ivy Shore (1915–1999), painter, was born in Melbourne, daughter of a South Australian suffragette, Elka, and engineer John Williams.
2 portraits in the collection
Robert Oatley AO (1928–2016), businessman, was one of Australia’s most successful wine industry figures.
The Reverend William Singleton (c. 1804-1875), Anglican clergyman, graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1826 and was ordained in the city’s Christ Church Cathedral in 1841.
1 portrait in the collection
Peter Booth (b. 1940) grew up in the English steel mill town of Sheffield, bike-riding on the nearby moors.
1 portrait in the collection
Tim Fairfax AC (b.1946), company director, grazier and philanthropist, is a founding benefactor of the National Portrait Gallery and a former chair of its board of directors.
1 portrait in the collection
Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue AC CBE DSG (1932–2024), a Yankunytjatjara woman, dedicated her life’s work to advancing the rights and wellbeing of Australia’s First Peoples.
2 portraits in the collection
Pixie O’Harris MBE (1903–1991), author and illustrator, was born Rona Olive Harris in Cardiff, one of the eight children of painter, George Frederick Harris.
1 portrait in the collection
‘The Australian Wonder’, Johnny Day (1856–1885), was an undefeated world-champion juvenile walker.
1 portrait in the collection
Barbara Tribe (1913–2000), artist, is one of Australia's most significant sculptors.
4 portraits in the collection
William Strutt arrived in Melbourne in 1850 having undertaken his training in art in Paris in the late 1830s.
1 portrait in the collection