Joanna Gilmour

Joanna Gilmour delves into a collection display that celebrates the immediacy and potency of drawing as an art form in its own right.

Portrait of a Pioneer , 1917
Violet Teague

Off her own bat

Joanna Gilmour profiles Violet Teague, whose sophisticated works hid her originality and non-conformity in plain sight.

You are who?

Joanna Gilmour reflects on merging collections and challenging traditional assumptions around portraiture in WHO ARE YOU.

William Shakespeare, c. 1600-1610 associated with John Taylor

Take thy face hence

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2021

Joanna Gilmour travels through time to explore the National Portrait Gallery London’s masterpieces in Shakespeare to Winehouse.

Twin chics

Joanna Gilmour on the exuberant union of fashion pioneers Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, captured in luminescent splendour by artist Carla Fletcher.

Venetia, Lady Digby, circa 1633-1634 by Sir Anthony van Dyck

Love in the extreme

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2020

Joanna Gilmour reveals love’s more intense manifestations in the tale of Lord Kenelm and Venetia Digby.

Little women

Joanna Gilmour looks beyond the ivory face of select portrait miniatures to reveal their sitters’ true grit.

Expect the unexpected

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

Portfolio of 54 portraits compiled by Queen Victoria, 1859–1861 by John Jabez Edwin Mayall, Camille Silvy, Frances Day and William Bambridge

Queen of cartes

Joanna Gilmour discusses the role of the carte de visite in portraiture’s democratisation, and its harnessing by Victoria, the world’s first media monarch.

Study for Aunty Mary King, 2010 by Mathew Lynn

The animating signature

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2018

Joanna Gilmore delights in the affecting drawings of Mathew Lynn.

Material culture

The Rajah Quilt’s narrative promptings are as intriguing as the textile is intricate.

The artist and her family, c. 1854 by Martha Berkeley

Presence and absence

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2018

The art of Australia’s colonial women painters affords us an invaluable, alternative perspective on the nascent nation-building project.

Nocturnal animals

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2017

Joanna Gilmour explores the enticing urban shadows cast by artists Martin Lewis and Edward Hopper.

Costantini's convictions

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2017

Jo Gilmour uncovers endearing authenticity in the art of a twice-transported Tasmanian.

Showing character

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2016

Joanna Gilmour on Tom Durkin playing with Melbourne's manhood.

Cachasunghia, Osage Warrior 1804–06 by Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin

Political profiles

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2016

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.

Waterfall in Australia, c. 1830 by Augustus Earle

Augustus serendipitous

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2016

The London-born son of an American painter, Augustus Earle ended up in Australia by accident in January 1825.

The Dissecting Room

Joanna Gilmour accounts for Australia’s deliciously ghoulish nineteenth century criminal portraiture.

Secure the shadow ere the substance fade

The tragic tale of Tom Wills, the ‘inventor’ of Australian Rules Football.

Alternative virtue

Joanna Gilmour presents John Kay’s portraits of a more infamous side of Edinburgh.

A surface against which we can move, 2014 by Sam Leach

No small wonder

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

In good company

Jean Appleton’s 1965 self portrait makes a fine addition to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection writes Joanna Gilmour.

Out of the shadows

Joanna Gilmour profiles the life and times of the shutter sisters May and Mina Moore.

Surface tension

Joanna Gilmour on the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2013.

The shipwright's arms

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

Home truths

Despite once expressing a limited interest in the self portrait, the idea of it has figured strongly in much of Tracey Moffatt's work and has done so in some of her most distinctive and compelling images.

The Cutmear sisters, Jane and Lucy, c. 1842

A man of superior attainments

Joanna Gilmour explores the life of a colonial portrait artist, writer and rogue Thomas Griffiths Wainewright.

Part of the crew of His Majesty's Ship Guardian endeavouring to escape in the boats

South-bound and down

Joanna Gilmour recounts the story of ill-fated sea voyages in the early stages of the Antipodean colony.

Seeing stars

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2012

Joanna Gilmour explores photographic depictions of Aboriginal sportsmen including Lionel Rose, Dave Sands, Jerry Jerome and Douglas Nicholls.

The importance of being bearded

Joanna Gilmour discovers that the beards of the ill-fated explorers Burke and Wills were as epic as their expedition to traverse Australia from south to north.

Emmanuel at bedtime, 2011 by George Mifsud

To startle the eye

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2012

National Photographic Portrait Prize judge Joanna Gilmour previews the 2012 exhibition.

More cash than dash

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2011

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

Louis XVI giving final instructions to the Comte de La Perouse, c. 1785

Sea legged frogs

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2011

Joanna Gilmour describes some of the stories of the individuals and incidents that define French exploration of Australia and the Pacific.

Omai, Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, 1775-76

First encounters

Magazine article by Joanna Gilmour, 2011

Representations of the inhabitants of the new world expose the complexities of the colonisers' intentions.

Small worlds

Bess Norriss Tait created miniature watercolour portraits full of character and life.

You beauty

Joanna Gilmour explores the fact and fictions surrounding the legendary life of Irish-born dancer Lola Montez.

Finest quality

Joanna Gilmour explores the life of Chinese-Australian businessman and philanthropist Quong Tart.

masculine/feminine, 2010 by Bridget Mac
NYSPP 2010 winner

Eyes on the Prize

A short visual essay of some of the works in the National Youth Self Portrait Prize 2010.

Fine and dandy

Whether the result of misadventure or misdemeanour, many accomplished artists were transported to Australia where they ultimately left a positive mark on the history of art in this country.

Figurative foundation

Joanna Gilmour explores the life and art of the Australian artist Janet Dawson.

Private virtues public lives

Family affections are preserved in a fine selection of intimate portraits.

Fits of delicacy and despair

Henry Mundy's portraits flesh out notions of propriety and good taste in a convict colony.

Like wow

Joanna Gilmour explores the life of female Australian surfing legend Isabel Letham.

Duty bound

Joanna Gilmour explores the life of colonial women Lady Ellen Stirling, Eliza Darling, Lady Eliza Arthur, Elizabeth Macquarie and Lady Jane Franklin.

Portrait of Lady Eyre Williams (Jessie Gibbon)

Chance encounter

Joanna Gilmour explores the life and times of one of Melbourne's early socialites, Jessie Eyre Williams.

Worth her salt

Jerrold Nathan's portrait of Jessie Street shows the elegant side of a many-faceted lady.

The aviatrix

Joanna Gilmour explores the extraordinary life of Australian female aviator Nancy Bird Walton AO OBE

Of ice and men

Frank Hurley's celebrated images document the heroism and minutiae of Australian exploration in Antarctica.

The house, the horse, the wife and the offspring

Joanna Gilmour writes about the portraiture of the colonial artist William Nicholas.

Naked ambition

Joanna Gilmour dives into the life of Australian swimming legend Annette Kellerman.

The Mutineers turning Lieut Bligh and part of the Officers and Crew adrift from His Majesty's Ship the Bounty

High & Bligh

Joanna Gilmour explores the 1790 portrait of William Bligh by Robert Dodd.

Moving in creative circles

Harold Cazneaux's portraits of influential Sydneysiders included Margaret Preston and Ethel Turner, both important figures in the development of ideas about Australian identity and culture.

Studio of the American & Australasian Photographic Co., Hill End, 1872

A rogue's calling card

Joanna Gilmour explores the stories behind the ninteenth-century carte de visites of bushrangers Frank Gardiner and Fred Lowry.

Private practice

David Smith portrayed Dr Henry Crock without the accoutrements of an orthopaedic surgeon, adding to the National Portrait Gallery's collection of eminent Australian medical practitioners.

Pretty in peach

It's remarkable that the inner Melbourne suburb of Richmond has produced two of Australia's most successful opera singers. Three decades apart, but within a short distance of each other, both Helen Porter Mitchell and Florence Wilson were born.

Staying home

True south #2

Joanna Gilmour brings a mindful Douglas Mawson’s perspective to bear on the concept of isolation.

Giving a dam

True south #1

Ensconced and meditative in crisp Tasmania, Joanna Gilmour pays tribute to passionate green advocate and photographer Olegas Truchanas.

Seeing stars

Celebrating Science Week

It has been suggested that Sir Thomas Brisbane’s interest in the New South Wales governorship was as attributable to his passion for astronomy as to the desirability of the position as a prestigious career move.

Percy, Reginald, Monty and George Faithfull, undated by Henry Dorner. Image courtesy the National Museum of Australia.

An affray which deserves particular mention

Ben Hall and his gang outdone, 6 February 1865

Bushranger Ben Hall and his cronies held around 40 people hostage in a pub north-west of Goulburn, telling their captives ‘don’t be alarmed; we only came here for a bit of fun’.

Olga Radalyski prison records, on loan from the Public Record Office of Victoria.

The sensational denouement of the case

The Yarra Boot Trunk Tragedy, 12 January 1899

The 'Yarra Boot Trunk Tragedy' unfolded a week before Christmas 1898, when some neighbourhood boys noticed a wooden box floating in the river at Richmond.

The consolations of religion

A bushranger meets his maker, 6 January 1826

James McCabe provides proof that hanging wasn’t necessarily a fate reserved for the perpetrators of murder and other deeds of darkest hue.

Henry Louis Bertrand, ca. 1865 photographed by the Milligan Brothers. Collection of the State Library of NSW

A passion eating into your vitals

The ‘Mad Dentist of Wynyard Square’ in court, 18 December 1865

The salacious and sordid details of Henry Kinder’s death transfixed Sydneysiders with a case combining murder with seduction, mesmerism, blackmail and poisoning.

Prison photograph of Ned Kelly c.1873, image courtesy National Museum of Australia.

The outlaws coolly disported themselves

Ned Kelly & co at Euroa, 9 and 10 December 1878

'Each man arrayed himself in a new rig from head to foot, and even such luxuries as soaps and perfumery were not despised'

Andrew George Scott, alias Captain Moonlite, c.1879 attributed to Charles Nettleton

Diseased curiosity

Captain Moonlite et al on trial for murder

Just after 10.00 o'clock on 3 December 1879, four prisoners were brought from their cells at Darlinghurst Gaol and placed in the dock of a courtroom heaving with agitated spectators

Death mask of George Melville courtesy of National Trust of Australia (Victoria), Old Melbourne Gaol Collection

A colourful story from Sideshow Alley

Infamy, the macabre & the portrait