The Family was painted by Charles Blackman around 1955. It is oil on board and measures about one metre high by 1.4 metres wide in its frame. The frame is narrow light wood with a stepped surface. This dark shadowy portrait shows the heads and shoulders of, in a row from the left: Jack McKinney, Judith Wright, and their daughter Meredith McKinney. They are painted in a distinctive stylised manner.
The background is divided horizontally; the top fifth is painted pale cream and the lower part, behind the figures, is a mixture of dark browns and greys. The focus is on the figures’ faces and hats.
Jack, on the left, wears a hat with a square box-like crown in washed-out blue above a round reddish brim. His face is blue and almost rectangular. His eyes are on a slant. The eye on our left is lower and larger than the other. Below a dark brow, it is an elongated green almond with a large black iris. The eye on the right is higher on the face, set beneath the hat brim; blue with a black iris and a flash of orange highlighting the eyelid. The straight edges of Jack’s nose run parallel to his cheek. His ear on the far left of the portrait is a loop of apricot and blue with a dark centre. Just below the ear, a hand rests on Jack’s shoulder. The lower part of his face and neck is obscured by deep shadow, only interrupted by a sprig of blue-green foliage.
The central figure, Judith, appears shorter than Jack. Her hat with its much flatter rounded crown and narrow brim does not stand as tall as his. The hat is blue and white striped with dashes of red, orange, and green. Judith’s eyes sit in shade under its brim. They are wide-spaced, blue, with pointed inner corners. Their black irises are positioned towards their rounded outer ends. Just beneath Judith’s eyes, a bunch of flowers of different shapes, sizes, and bright colours, hides the half of her face to our left. On the right her face is painted with smudges of white and pink. A pale haze on either side of her face suggests hair.
Between Judith and Meredith, on our far right, is another brightly coloured bouquet. This seems to be held by one of the figures' hands at the very bottom edge of the portrait.
Meredith, on the far right, is smaller and shorter than her parents. Her hat has a square crown with a dome fitted within it sitting on a narrow brim. The hat is patterned with blue, white, yellow, and orange flowers. Beneath the hat is a dark band of shadow concealing Meredith’s eyes. Her face, with grey and white skin, tapers with straight lines to a square chin. Her nose is triangular with a narrow bridge widening out to large, rounded nostrils. Meredith’s lips are small and closed, crimson, outlined with black. On either side of her face is an irregular elongated blue-grey shape, possibly representing hair. In front of her chest is a mass of yellow and blue swirls. Meredith wears a white pointed collar and a floral-patterned top with yellow highlighting her shoulder on the far right of the portrait.
Audio description written and voiced by Lucie Shawcross, 2021
