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Reveries

The exhibition Reveries: Photography and mortality is a powerful display which brings together images that depict the last phase of people's lives.

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. 

NPPP 2016 exhibition essay

Penny Grist, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2016 Prize.

Trumble's way

At the end of a summer break one is tempted to say that there is nothing much to report. Isn’t one restful holiday very much like another?

In the galleries

Christopher Chapman highlights the inaugural hang of the new National Portrait Gallery building which opened in December 2008.

Mental as everything

Chris O'Doherty, also known as Reg Mombassa, is best-known for his Mambo imagery but he also paints a lot of self portraits.

No small wonder

Joanna Gilmour describes how artist Sam Leach works on a small scale to grand effect.

Painting them gently

Penny Grist on motivation, method and melancholy in the portraiture of Darren McDonald.

Canadian identities

An exploration of national identity in the Canadian context drawn from the symposium Face to Face at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2004.

Embrace your inner nerd

The southern winter has arrived. For people in the northern hemisphere (the majority of humanity) the idea of snow and ice, freezing mist and fog in June, potentially continuing through to August and beyond, encapsulates the topsy-turvidom of our southern continent.

The real Thea

Long after the portraitist became indifferent to her, and died, a beguiling portrait hung over its subject.

Listomania

Sarah Engledow describes the fall-out once Brett Whiteley stuck Patrick White’s list of his loves and hates onto his great portrait of the writer.

Study in scarlet

Angus Trumble reflects on the force of nature that was Helena Rubinstein.

Maria Caroline Brownrigg

At first glance, this small watercolour group portrait of her two sons and four daughters by Maria Caroline Brownrigg (d. 1880) may seem prosaic, even hesitant

The shipwright's arms

Joanna Gilmour explores the life and times of convict-turned-artist William Buelow Gould.

Portrait Donors