Patrick McCaughey

Patrick McCaughey (b. 1943) was director of the National Gallery of Victoria from 1981 to 1988. Born in Dublin, he was ten when his family moved to Melbourne. He studied Fine Arts and English at the University of Melbourne, and then became art critic for the Age, in which capacity he championed abstraction and the work of artist friends including Fred Williams, Roger Kemp and Fred Cress. As foundation professor of Visual Arts at Monash University, McCaughey established the first contemporary art specialist department in Australia. As director of the NGV, he continued to promote the work of Australian artists and oversaw the acquisition of works by major 20th-century Australian painters including Sid Nolan and Albert Tucker. He held a visiting professorship at Harvard University from 1986 to 1987, and after leaving the NGV he was Director of the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut (one of America's oldest art museums), and of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. His many publications include the memoir The Bright Shapes and the True Names (2003) and Strange Country: Why Australian painting matters (2014). This is one of two portraits of McCaughey Cress painted; it was a 1985 Archibald Prize finalist.

Gift of the artist 2005. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
© Estate of Fred Cress