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Ayman Kaake

This photo is a self portrait. So this is me. So you can see the eye resemblance. So, and this photo is inspired by my friends, my workplace.

David Williamson

Australian playwright, David Williamson tells us tales from his career.

About Face

From punchy short pieces to longer form leanings, it's the place to come for a frequent fix of the world's most accessible art form.

Some prime ministers

Sarah Engledow explores the history of the prime ministers and artists featured in the exhibition.

Expect the unexpected

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

Prima facie

Sarah Engledow casts a judicious eye over portraits in the Victorian Bar’s Peter O’Callaghan QC Portrait Gallery.

Sibly irresistible

Alexandra Roginski reveals a forceful feminist figure in the colonial period’s slippery science, phrenology.

Christmas Island

This is my last Trumbology before, in a little more than a week from now, I pass to my successor Karen Quinlan the precious baton of the Directorship of the National Portrait Gallery.

20/20 launch speech

Dr Helen Nugent AO, Chairman, National Portrait Gallery at the opening of 20/20: Celebrating twenty years with twenty new portrait commissions.

The Black Death

The best horror stories are real. A flea sinks its proboscis into the skin of a sick black rat, feeds on its blood, and ingests lethally multiplying bacteria.

Observation Point

Portrait photography, by definition, is a collaboration. It is also the grandest of lies masquerading as the ultimate truth.

Snap decisions

NPPP judge Robert Cook provides irreverent insight into this year’s fare, and having to be a bit judgemental.

Nicholas Harding: 28 Portraits

Sarah Engledow looks at three decades of Nicholas Harding's portraiture.

20 20

Sarah Engledow picks some favourites from a decade of the National Photographic Portrait Prize.

Showing character

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

Final frame

Karl James reflects on soldier portraiture during the Great War.

Nicholas Harding

Over the years the young Nicholas Harding got his hands on various mice and guinea pigs, but they served mainly to illustrate the concept of mortality. 

Ken Done

With a mum who was married to a tradie, you’d think it a fair chance that the baby Jesus would have grown up with a dog in the house.

All the way with K of K

Sarah Engledow bristles at the biographers’ neglect of Kitchener’s antipodean intervention.

Out of the blocks

Dawn Fraser, Lionel Rose, Shane Gould and Cathy Freeman

Sideshow Alley

Death masks, post-mortem drawings and other spooky and disquieting portraits... Come and see how portraits of infamous Australians were used in the 19th century.

The Waxworks

Waxworks were among the various types of entertainment venue to emerge in Australian cities in the mid-nineteenth century. 

Brains trust

Eminent doctors and scientists have for more than a century consistently caused our nation to punch far above her weight.

The Sculling Match at Sydney for the Championship of the World, 1877

Purchased 2015

About Face

From punchy short pieces to longer form leanings, it's the place to come for a frequent fix of the world's most accessible art form.

Melanie Faith Dove

I had been watching Agnes with intrigue, her face and profile were so mesmerizing. On our final day together I pulled her aside and convinced her that she had such an amazing face that I needed to get a photograph for myself. It was very spontaneous in that I decided quickly how it would best look and shot it in only two frames.

Seeing stars

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

Mojsze Preisz, 2011

Barton and Watson, 1902

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2012

The Seekers reunite 50 years on, 2011

Gift of Judith Durham, Athol Guy, Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley 2012. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.

Les Darcy, c. 1916

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2010

Lovingly observed

Sarah Engledow previews the beguiling summer exhibition, Idle hours.

Through blue eyes

Works by Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan bring the desert, the misty seashore and the hot Monaro plains to exhibition Open Air: Portraits in the landscape.

I walk the line

Bruce Petty's animated self portrait captures a life's journey compressed into a few minutes.

Vanity Fair Portraits

Vanity Fair Portraits traces the birth and evolution of photographic portraiture through the archives of Vanity Fair magazine.

The Vanity model

Vanity Fair Editor David Friend describes how the rebirth of the magazine sated our desire for access into the lives of celebrities and set the standard for the new era of portrait photography.

Nicholas Chevalier, c. 1867

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by Graham Smith 2009

Clifton Pugh

This exhibition offers a comprehensive display of Clifton Pugh's portraits revealing his development and growth from tonal paintings to a unique style that was in demand from politicians, artists, academics and Australian personalities.

A sketch for some portraits

Judith Pugh reflects on Clifton Pugh's approach to portrait making.

The Multifarious Career of George Selth Coppin

George Selth Coppin (1819-1906) comedian, impresario and entrepreneur, was a driving force of the early Australian theatre.

Australians in Hollywood

Although perceived to be a recent phenomenon, the 'Aussie invasion' of Hollywood can actually be traced as far back as the early 1900s

Phil (Phil May), 1895

Gift of Mr Ronald Walker 2001

Mungo MacCallum, press gallery cricket, 1973

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Enid Hawkins 2003
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program

Heads of the People

For Tom Roberts - Australia's best nineteenth-century portrait painter - neither a proto-national portrait gallery nor more popular collections of portrait heads, were sufficient public celebrations for the notables of Australian history

Punch, wife of Cullabaa, Broken Bay tribe, 1836

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Dr Robert Edwards AO 1999
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program