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Queen Victoria, 1901

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2018

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.

The Lawrence lustre

Angus Trumble salutes the glorious portraiture of Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Cultural kaleidoscope

The complex connections between four creative Australians; Patrick White, Sidney Nolan, Robert Helpmann and Peter Sculthorpe.

The Stories Beneath

So Fine

The National Portrait Gallery is pleased to announce its winter exhibition is So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history. It will open to the public from 29 June 2018.

Risky business

John Zubrzycki lauds the characters of the Australian escapology trade.

Of beef in burgundy

Angus Trumble reveals the complex technical mastery behind a striking recent acquisition, Henry Bone’s enamel portrait of William Manning.

Goods and chattels

I have been reading systematically through the ads in the earliest issues of the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, such a rich vein of information about certain aspects of daily life in Regency Sydney.

Nicholas Harding: 28 Portraits

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

Vivan Sundaram

Born in 1943 in Simla, Vivan Sundaram’s long career has given him opportunities to work in a range of mediums – painting, installation, assemblage, photography, digital media and film.

The long game

Penelope Grist spends some quality time with the Portrait Gallery’s summer collection exhibition, Eye to Eye.

Pre-Raphaelite Profile

In 2006 the National Portrait Gallery acquired a splendid portrait of Victoria's first governor, Lieutenant Governor Charles Joseph La Trobe by Thomas Woolner.

The selfie stick

Last week ABC Television came to interview me about selfie sticks. The story was prompted by the announcement that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has lately prohibited the use of these inside their galleries. So far as I am aware we have not yet encountered the phenomenon, but no doubt we will before too long.

So Fine

Ten women artists explore the possibilities of portraiture as a contemporary art form; and reinterpret and reimagine Australian history in the Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history.

Lucy Culliton

Most well-regarded pictures of chickens show them dead. A reliable way to tell if a chicken in a painting is dead is to check if it’s hanging upside down, because unlike, say, cockatoos, chickens don’t practise inversion for enjoyment in life.