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Of plague and portraits

Corinna Cullen on the symbolic power of pandemic-related imagery over the ages.

Poison pen

Michael Desmond examines the career of the eighteenth-century suspected poisoner and portrait artist Thomas Griffiths Wainewright.

Why do painted portraits still matter?

Lecture by Sandy Nairne, Director, National Portrait Gallery, London, given at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra on 28 April 2006.

A real Pratt

The death of a gentlewoman is shrouded in mystery, a well-liked governor finds love after sorrow, and two upright men become entangled in the historical record.

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.

The bright-eyed Mariner

The Changing Face of the Scientist

Scientists tend to conjure up images of men in white coats in labs but this is just one stereotype in an evolving history of how we have perceived scientists, and how their profession has been understood over the years.

The last word

David Hansen’s tribute to his close friend, prince of words and former National Portrait Gallery director, the late Angus Trumble.

Forum participants

Biographies of participants in the Writing lives, revealing lives forum.

Sophisticated and glamorous

Michael Riley’s early portraits by Amanda Rowell.

Melati Suryodarmo

Born in Surakarta (Solo), Indonesia in 1969, Melati Suryodarmo’s first degree was in international relations.

Getting a head

Alexandra Roginski gets a feel for phrenology’s fundamentals.

The Rothschilds, the Montefiores, and the Victorian Gold Rush

Some years ago my colleague Andrea Wolk Rager and I spent several days in the darkened basement of a Rothschild Bank, inspecting every one of the nearly 700 autochromes created immediately before World War I by the youthful Lionel de Rothschild.

Portrait Donors

School portraits

Inga Walton sheds light on a portraiture collection usually only seen by students and teachers at Melbourne University.

The news from Washington

Australia's former Cultural Attache to the USA, Ron Ramsey, describes the mood at the opening week of the revitalised American National Portrait Gallery.