The art of Australia’s colonial women painters affords us an invaluable, alternative perspective on the nascent nation-building project.
The story behind two colonial portraits; a lithograph of captain and convict John Knatchbull and newspaper illustration of Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke.
Joanna Gilmour looks beyond the ivory face of select portrait miniatures to reveal their sitters’ true grit.
Dr. Sarah Engledow discovers the amazing life of Ms. Hilda Spong, little remembered star of the stage, who was captured in a portrait by Tom Roberts.
Ashleigh Wadman rediscovers the Australian characters represented with a kindly touch by the British portrait artist Leslie Ward for the society magazine Vanity Fair.
Charles Haddon Chambers the Australian-born playboy playwright settled permanently in London in 1880 but never lost his Australian stance when satirising the English.
John Singer Sargent: a painter at the vanguard of contemporary movements in music, literature and theatre.
2019 National Photographic Portrait Prize judge Anne O’Hehir looks beneath the surface of this year’s entries.
Sarah Engledow likes the manifold mediums of Nicholas Harding’s portraiture.
Joanna Gilmour examines the prolific output of Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin, and discovers the risk of taking a portrait at face value.
Joanna Gilmour describes how artist Sam Leach works on a small scale to grand effect.
Marian Anderson’s glorious voice thrust her into stardom, and a more reluctant role as American civil rights pioneer.
At just 7.8 x 6.2 cm, the daguerreotype of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort and his wife Theresa is one of the smallest works in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.
Michael Desmond explores what makes a portrait subject significant.
Joanna Gilmour explores the life of a colonial portrait artist, writer and rogue Thomas Griffiths Wainewright.
Grace Carroll contemplates the curious case of Christian Waller.
