Search / unknown

Unknown drawer

Dempsey’s People curator David Hansen chronicles a research tale replete with serendipity, adventure and Tasmanian tigers.

Portrait 61

Max Dupain's unknown portrait subjects, phrenologist Madame Sibly, Indigenous-European relationships, Thomas Gainsborough and more.

Observation point

I work with portraiture as a way to explore the nuances and complexities of contemporary selfhood and subjectivity.

Here and there

Nathalie Latham's exhibition Australia's Creative Diaspora explores Australians, in the arts, who live and work internationally.

Little treasures

The acquisition of the ivory miniatures of Mortimer and Mrs Lewis.

Life class

Barbara Blackman reflects on her experiences as a life model.

The house, the horse, the wife and the offspring

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

Dupain detective

Johanna McMahon revels in history and mystery in pursuit of a suite of unknown portrait subjects.

Northern exposure

Phil Manning celebrates a century of Brisbane photographic portraiture.

A rogue's calling card

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

Chance encounter

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

An Australian story

In his speech launching the new National Portrait Gallery building on 3 December 2008, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd set the Gallery in a national and historical context.

Strutt your stuff

Matthew Jones on the upshot of a St Kilda Road outrage.

Capturing Cook

In focussing on the importance of gifts in the building of the collection, prominence must be given to the most spectacular of the National Portrait Gallery's acquisitions; the portrait of Captain James Cook RN by John Webber R.A.

The Wentworths – Hidden in Plain Sight

Grace Carroll on the gendered world of the Wentworths.

Pen power

Politics and personae in the portraiture of TextaQueen by Jane Raffan.

Icons and imagery

Alison Weir explores the National Portrait Gallery, London and the BP Portrait Award to find what makes a good painted portrait - past and present.

Apollo's breath

Christopher Chapman delights in the intimacy of Robert Mapplethorpe's photography

The life of Bryant

Tenille Hands explores a portrait prize gifted to the National Screen and Sound Archive.

Nocturnal animals

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

Depth of Field

The exhibition Depth of Field displays a selection of portrait photographs that reflect the strength and diversity of Australian achievement.

Black and white history

English artist Benjamin Duterrau took up the cause of the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania with his detailed and sympathetic renderings.

The story of us

Gallery directors Karen Quinlan and Tony Ellwood talk to Penelope Grist about the NPG and NGV collaborative exhibition, Who Are You: Australian Portraiture.

The artist, the scholar and the gentleman

Kwon Hyeeun introduces Korean portraits of Kang Sehwang, and five generations of the Kang family.

Pop goes the preconception

A National Portrait Gallery, London exhibition redefines portraiture, shifting the focus towards a new perspective on Pop Art.

The fat of the land

Sir Sidney Kidman (1857-1935) is inscribed in Australian legend as the ‘Cattle King’. 

Mugshots

A toast to the acquisition of an unconventional new portrait of former Prime Minister, Stanley Melbourne Bruce.

Meeting by Murder

The story behind two colonial portraits; a lithograph of captain and convict John Knatchbull and newspaper illustration of Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke.

Suave

Charles Haddon Chambers the Australian-born playboy playwright settled permanently in London in 1880 but never lost his Australian stance when satirising the English.

Tiny Trace of a Colonial Giant

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.

Pop poet

Dr Anne Sanders previews the works in the new focus exhibition Paul Kelly and The Portraits.

Picture this...

This edited version of a speech by Andrew Sayers examines some of the antecedents of the National Portrait Gallery and set out the ideas behind the modern Gallery and its collection.

Adam’s Prize Apples

Pamela Gerrish Nunn explores New Zealand’s premium award for portraiture.

Hired guns, bounty hunters and horse whisperers

Jude Rae contemplates the portrait commission.

The bright-eyed Mariner

Rethinking foundational histories

A focus on Indigenous-European relationships underpins Facing New Worlds. By Kate Fullagar.

Past present

Krysia Kitch celebrates Oodgeroo Noonuccal.

Worth her salt

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

Final frame

Karl James reflects on soldier portraiture during the Great War.

Birds of a feather

Charting a path from cockatiel to finch, Annette Twyman explores her family portraits and stories.

Off grid

Aimee Board ventures within and beyond to consider two remarkable new Gallery acquisitions.

Self-effacing

Michael Wardell samples the fare in the University of Queensland National Self-portrait Prize.

Moving still

Anne O’Hehir on the seductive power of the film still to reflect and shape ourselves and our cultural landscape.

High & Bligh

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

Friends and Acquaintances

Dr. Sarah Engledow discusses a collection of drawings and prints by the Victorian artist Rick Amor acquired in 2005.

Flesh, figure and rock

Aimee Board traces Judy Cassab’s path to the Australian outback, arriving at the junction of inspiration and abstraction.

Home and away

Sir William Dobell painted the portraits of Sir Charles Lloyd Jones and Sir Hudson Fysh, who did much to promote the image of Australia in this country and abroad.

Sea legged frogs

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

Demimonde liaisons

Jane Raffan feasts on modernity’s entrée in the Belle Époque theatre of the demimonde.

Secure the shadow ere the substance fade

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

Through thick and thin

Sarah Engledow likes the manifold mediums of Nicholas Harding’s portraiture.

Regarding Henrys

Sarah Engledow ponders the divergent legacies of Messrs Kendall and Lawson.

The shipwright's arms

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

Material culture

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