Search / william king

Brothers on farms

Malcolm Robertson tells the family history of one of Australia's earliest patrons of the arts, his Scottish born great great great grandfather, William Robertson.

Lust for life

Celebrated Sydney-based photographer and performer William Yang was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to produce a new performance work that premiered at the opening of the Gallery's new building.

Miscellaneous obsessions

William Yang shares the stories behind his autobiographical self portraits that celebrate his cultural heritage and identity.

Sir William Dargie CBE

Sir William Dargie, painter and eight times winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture, died in Melbourne on July 26, 2003, aged 91.

The house, the horse, the wife and the offspring

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

Of beef in burgundy

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

High & Bligh

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

Bill and Ted's excellent portrait.

Sarah Engledow on Messrs Dobell and MacMahon and the art of friendship.

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 Wentworths – Hidden in Plain Sight

Grace Carroll on the gendered world of the Wentworths.

The bright-eyed Mariner

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.

In the thick of it

Projecting the splendour of the empire, and the resolve of its subjects, the bust of William Birdwood keeps a stiff upper lip in the National Portrait Gallery.

The importance of being bearded

Joanna Gilmour discovers that the beards of the ill-fated explorers Burke and Wills were as epic as their expedition to traverse Australia from south to north.

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.

South-bound and down

Joanna Gilmour recounts the story of ill-fated sea voyages in the early stages of the Antipodean colony.

Private virtues public lives

Family affections are preserved in a fine selection of intimate portraits.

Barak, respected elder

Dr Christopher Chapman looks at the life of Wurundjeri elder William Barak through the portrait painted by Victor de Pury in 1899.

Portrait 29

This issue of Portrait Magazine includes William Bligh, Lionel Rose, Richard Larter, Layne Beachley, William Yang and more.

Portrait 46

This issue features Richard Avedon, Tracey Moffatt, Indigenous portraiture, William Kentridge, roller derby and more.

Portrait 27

This issue of Portrait Magazine feature Lucian Frued, John Witzig, colonial death portraits, William Kinghorne, Henry Crock, and more.

Portrait 9

This issue of Portrait Magazine features Deborah Mailman, the Presence and Absence exhibition of portrait sculpture, Sir William Dargie and more.

Portrait 32

This issue features Vanity Fair, Nancy Bird Walton, William Barak, Sidney Kidman, Benjamin Duterrau's portraits of the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania, and more.

Cook in context

Robert Oatley's continuing benefaction has helped the National Portrait Gallery acquire works that add another layer to the story of Captain Cook.

Old Blighty

Angus Trumble ponders the many faces of William Bligh.

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.

Portrait 67

William Yang on his autobiographical self portraits, David Parker's 1970s and 80s Melbourne music photographs, seven-time NPPP finalist Chris Budgeon, and Benjamin Warlngundu Ellis.

Lear unbuttoned

Sarah Engledow steps up to the footlights and applauds the storyline behind Nicholas Harding's portraits of actor John Bell.

A new perspective

An exhibition devoted to Hans Holbein's English commissions shows the portraitist bringing across the Channel new technical developments in art - with a dazzling facility.

Ready , set... shoot

The exhibition Flash: Australian Athletes in Focus offers various interpretations of sporting men and women by five Australian photographers.

Encounter at Kintore

Photographer Hari Ho describes the creation of his portrait of Papunya Tula artist Makinti Napanangka.

In bloom

Susi Muddiman delights in Michael Zavros’ stunning portrait of the honourable Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO.

Nobel and his prize

To complement the exhibition Australians and the Nobel Prize, Jennifer Gason gives us a sense of the proceedings that occur during the award ceremony.

Expect the unexpected

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

The Lawrence lustre

Angus Trumble salutes the glorious portraiture of Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Tribute

Bob Ellis (1942–2016) was a journalist, columnist, screenwriter, film director, playwright, speechwriter and critic.

The animating signature

Joanna Gilmore delights in the affecting drawings of Mathew Lynn.

Little women

Joanna Gilmour looks beyond the ivory face of select portrait miniatures to reveal their sitters’ true grit.

The fat of the land

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

In the round

Andrew Sayers outlines the highlights of the National Portrait Gallery's display of portrait sculpture.

Pretty in peach

The Wonder Years

Sarah Hill introduces the portrait busts of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Captain Charles Ulm by Enid Fleming.

First encounters

Representations of the inhabitants of the new world expose the complexities of the colonisers' intentions.

Where the wild things are

Michael Desmond explores the complex portrait of Dr Bob Brown by Harold 'The Kangaroo' Thornton.

The last word

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

A gift for all ages

The then Minister for the Arts and Sport, Rod Kemp, reflects on the value of the Cultural Gifts Program.

Fine and dandy

Whether the result of misadventure or misdemeanour, many accomplished artists were transported to Australia where they ultimately left a positive mark on the history of art in this country.

Desperately seeking Sonia

Esther Erlich’s portrait of Lady McMahon.

Empire records

Celebrates the centenary of the first national art collection, the Historic Memorials Collection, housed at Australia's Parliament House.

The real Thea

Long after the portraitist became indifferent to her, and died, a beguiling portrait hung over its subject.

Showing character

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

Form and reality

A photographic portrait by Kerry Dundas captures the contemplative mind of visionary painter Godfrey Miller.

Paper weight

Joanna Gilmour delves into a collection display that celebrates the immediacy and potency of drawing as an art form in its own right.

Giving and getting

The exhibition Portraits for Posterity celebrates gifts to the Gallery, of purchases made with donated funds, and testifies to the generosity and community spirit of Australians.

The Obama effect

Kim Sajet reflects on two portraits with a power that extends beyond gallery walls.

The artist, the scholar and the gentleman

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

Poison pen

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

The Fairfax Gift

This article examines the portraits gifted to the National Portrait Gallery by Fairfax Holdings in 2003.

The spirit of the gift

Former NPG Director, Andrew Sayers celebrates the support given to the Gallery by Gordon and Marilyn Darling.

In a good paddock

Celebrating a new painted portrait of Joseph Banks, Sarah Engledow spins a yarn of the naturalist, the first kangaroo in France and Don, a Spanish ram.

Celebrity cutpurse

Grace Carroll discusses the portrait of the late-eighteenth century gentleman pickpocket George Barrington.

Observation point

Tim Storrier describes the influences on the development of his artistic style.

More cash than dash

Joanna Gilmour describes how colonial portraitists found the perfect market among social status seeking Sydneysiders.

101 photographic portraits

Pat Corrigan's generous gift of 100 photographic portraits by Greg Weight.

Painting mates

Michael Desmond discusses Fred Williams' portraits of friends, artist Clifton Pugh, David Aspden and writer Stephen Murray-Smith, and the stylistic connections between his portraits and landscapes.

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.

Sketches and sermons

Jessica Smith looks at the 'fetching' portrait of Tasmania's first Anglican Bishop, Francis Russell Nixon by George Richmond

Around the grounds

Anne Sanders writes about the exhibitions Victoria & Albert: Art & Love on display at the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace and the retrospective of Sir Thomas Lawrence at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

All the way with K of K

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

The Stories Beneath

Risky business

John Zubrzycki lauds the characters of the Australian escapology trade.

A nose by any other name

In the exhibition William Kentridge: Drawn from Africa at the National Gallery of Australia, the artist marries Gogol's Tsarist Russia, with that of Stalin and the damaging history of his homeland, South Africa.

Figurative foundation

Joanna Gilmour explores the life and art of the Australian artist Janet Dawson.

Alternative virtue

Joanna Gilmour presents John Kay’s portraits of a more infamous side of Edinburgh.

It's a Mora!

Select extracts from Mirka Mora's autobiography, Wicked but Virtuous, provide rich accompaniment to recent Gallery acquisitions.  

Portrait of a patron

A new painting by Jiawei Shen captures the vision and resolve of the Gallery's founder, L. Gordon Darling AC CMG.

Through thick and thin

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

Four from the 30s

Australia's tradition of sculpted portraits stretches back to the early decades of the nineteenth century and continues to sustain a group of dedicated sculptors.

Fits of delicacy and despair

Henry Mundy's portraits flesh out notions of propriety and good taste in a convict colony.

The shipwright's arms

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

Poet of the Fleeting Moment

Mark Strizic's work crosses a broad spectrum of photographic fields including urban, industrial, commercial, and architectural photography. 

Courage, Self-analysis and Skill

The story behind George Lambert's Self-portrait with Gladioli.

In the galleries

Christopher Chapman highlights the inaugural hang of the new National Portrait Gallery building which opened in December 2008.

The Royal she

Traversing paint and pixels, Inga Walton examines portraits of select women in Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits.

Imagination

Dr Sarah Engledow tells the story of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee portrait by Australian artist Ralph Heimans.

Chance encounter

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

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.

The elegant thinker

Sarah Engledow pens a fond farewell to acclaimed science historian Ann Moyal.

A guy from Paris

Sarah Engledow on a foundational gallery figure who was quick on the draw.

City boys

Christopher Chapman immerses himself in Larry Clark’s field of vision.

Apollo's breath

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

Mugshots

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

The first nurse

Tamsin Hong recounts the tale of Marion Smith, the only known Australian Indigenous servicewoman of World War One.

Strutt your stuff

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

The incomparable Beaton

To accompany the exhibition Cecil Beaton: Portraits, held at the NPG in 2005, this article is drawn from Hugo Vickers's authorised biography, Cecil Beaton (1985).

Everybody's heard about the bird

Two professionals; Australian surfer Layne Beachley and photographer Petrina Hicks, combine their strengths to achieve a remarkable portrait.

Rethinking foundational histories

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

Facing Facts

Former NPG Director, Andrew Sayers describes the 1922 Self-portrait with Gladioli by George Lambert.

The alchemist’s profile

John Zubrzycki meets Australian paint pioneer Jim Cobb.

What price self?

Jane Raffan investigates auction sales of self portraits nationally and internationally.

You beauty

Joanna Gilmour explores the fact and fictions surrounding the legendary life of Irish-born dancer Lola Montez.

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.

My Favourite Australian

The Australian public was invited in 2008 to vote for their favourite Australian.  After the votes were tallied an exhibition of the top-ten Popular Australians and the top-twenty unsung heroes was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery.

Queen of cartes

Joanna Gilmour discusses the role of the carte de visite in portraiture’s democratisation, and its harnessing by Victoria, the world’s first media monarch.

In the flesh

An exhibition of humanness in ten themes by Penelope Grist.

Mrs Cameron and the V&A

In March 2003 Magda Keaney travelled to London to join the photography section of the Victoria & Albert Museum for three months.

Confessional conversations

Fiona Gruber investigates the work of Australian painter Kristin Headlam.

Sea legged frogs

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

Love in the extreme

Joanna Gilmour reveals love’s more intense manifestations in the tale of Lord Kenelm and Venetia Digby.

Great Scots

Diana O’Neil samples the tartan treats on offer in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Hyperversity

Dr Sarah Engledow writes about the larger-than-life Australian performance artist, Leigh Bowery.

Unknown drawer

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

Oz and beyond

Martin Sharp fulfils the Pop art idiom of merging art and life.

Big it up

Former National Portrait Gallery Curator Magda Keaney was a member of the selection panel of the Schwepes Photographic Portrait Prize 2004 at the National Portrait Gallery London.

Cool cool world

Penelope Grist unpacks photographs by David Parker, who captured the phenomenal emergence of the 1970s and 80s Melbourne music scene.

Life class

Barbara Blackman reflects on her experiences as a life model.

Material culture

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

Petal to the mettle

Sarah Engledow lauds the very civil service of Dame Helen Blaxland.

A potpourri of portraits

Archie 100 curator (and detective) Natalie Wilson’s nationwide search for Archibald portraits unearthed the fascinating stories behind some long-lost treasures.

To the end of the earth

The portrait of Dr. Johann Reinhold Forster and his son George Forster from 1780, is one of the oldest in the NPG's collection.

Listening to form

National Gallery of Australia curator Jane Kinsman discusses the portraiture of Henri Matisse.

Anatomist's eye

Robert Hannaford has completed around 400 portraits over the span of his career. 

Corporate Characters

A collection of thirty-seven caricatures by the artist Joe Greenberg capture the heroes and villians of Australian business in the 1980s.

Secure the shadow ere the substance fade

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

Listomania

Sarah Engledow describes the fall-out once Brett Whiteley stuck Patrick White’s list of his loves and hates onto his great portrait of the writer.

The Philosophy of Teapots and Ducks

Cartoonist Michael Leunig's insights into the human condition and current affairs have become famous Australia-wide.

I'm not there

Finest quality

Joanna Gilmour explores the life of Chinese-Australian businessman and philanthropist Quong Tart.

Peripheral vision

Aimee Board chats to emerging photographer Charles Dennington.

The Dissecting Room

Joanna Gilmour accounts for Australia’s deliciously ghoulish nineteenth century criminal portraiture. 

Reveries

The exhibition Reveries: Photography and mortality is a powerful display which brings together images that depict the last phase of people's lives.

Dane reign

Mette Skougaard and Thomas Lyngby bring eloquent context to Ralph Heimans’ portraits of Crown Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark.

Be bold

The name of Florence Broadhurst, one of Australia’s most significant wallpaper and textile designers, is now firmly cemented in the canon of Australian art and design.

Melbourne experience

Diana Warnes explores the lives of Hal and Katherine 'Kate' Hattam through their portraits painted by Fred Williams and Clifton Pugh.

Love my way

Inga Walton delves into the bohemian group of artists and writers who used each other as muses and transformed British culture.

Seduce Amuse Entertain

Michael Desmond profiles a handful of the entrants in first National Photographic Portrait Prize and notes emerging themes and categories.

Northern exposure

Phil Manning celebrates a century of Brisbane photographic portraiture.

Presence and absence

The art of Australia’s colonial women painters affords us an invaluable, alternative perspective on the nascent nation-building project.

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.

An actress and her fans

Dr. Sarah Engledow discovers the amazing life of Ms. Hilda Spong, little remembered star of the stage, who was captured in a portrait by Tom Roberts.

Vanity fair

Ashleigh Wadman rediscovers the Australian characters represented with a kindly touch by the British portrait artist Leslie Ward for the society magazine Vanity Fair.

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.

A feast of friends

John Singer Sargent: a painter at the vanguard of contemporary movements in music, literature and theatre.

Snap chat

2019 National Photographic Portrait Prize judge Anne O’Hehir looks beneath the surface of this year’s entries.

All dressed up

Jane Raffan asks do clothes make the portrait, and can the same work with a new title fetch a better price?

Final frame

Karl James reflects on soldier portraiture during the Great War.

Political profiles

Joanna Gilmour examines the prolific output of Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin, and discovers the risk of taking a portrait at face value.

No small wonder

Joanna Gilmour describes how artist Sam Leach works on a small scale to grand effect.

The right note

Marian Anderson’s glorious voice thrust her into stardom, and a more reluctant role as American civil rights pioneer.

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.

Good, bad and the ugly

Michael Desmond explores what makes a portrait subject significant.

Back in black

Krysia Kitch reviews black chronicles at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

A man of superior attainments

Joanna Gilmour explores the life of a colonial portrait artist, writer and rogue Thomas Griffiths Wainewright.

Enigma

Grace Carroll contemplates the curious case of Christian Waller.

Canadian identities

An exploration of national identity in the Canadian context drawn from the symposium Face to Face at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2004.

Mother’s muse

Inga Walton traces the poignant path of photographer Polixeni Papapetrou, revealed in the NGV’s summer retrospective.

Emblems of beauty

Keith Christiansen introduces the exhibition The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Friends and Acquaintances

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

Home truths

Despite once expressing a limited interest in the self portrait, the idea of it has figured strongly in much of Tracey Moffatt's work and has done so in some of her most distinctive and compelling images.

Kiwi magpie

Penelope Grist finds inspiration in pioneering New Zealand artist, Frances Hodgkins.

The jungle look

David Gist steps beyond the public relations veneer of Australia’s official Vietnam War portrait photographs.

The activist A-list

Dr Sarah Engledow examines a number of figures in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery who were pioneers or substantial supporters of the seminal Australian environmental campaigns of the early 1970s and 1980s.

Take thy face hence

Joanna Gilmour travels through time to explore the National Portrait Gallery London’s masterpieces in Shakespeare to Winehouse.

The portrait writ large

Karen Vickery on Chang the Chinese giant in Australia.

Cultural kaleidoscope

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

Illuminating history

Joanna Gilmour reflects on 25 years of collecting at the National Portrait Gallery.

The mind's eye

Christopher Chapman takes a trip through the doors of perception, arriving at the junction of surrealism and psychoanalysis.

Sibly irresistible

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

Splendid, many-splendoured

Sandra Bruce gazes on love and the portrait through Australian Love Stories’ multi-faceted prism.

Unbuttoning uniforms

Sharon Peoples contemplates costumes and the construction of identity.

In good company

Jean Appleton’s 1965 self portrait makes a fine addition to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection writes Joanna Gilmour.

Augustus serendipitous

The London-born son of an American painter, Augustus Earle ended up in Australia by accident in January 1825. 

Lauded legacy

Karl James gives short shrift to doubts about the profile of General Sir John Monash.

Lovingly observed

Sarah Engledow previews the beguiling summer exhibition, Idle hours.

Getting a head

Alexandra Roginski gets a feel for phrenology’s fundamentals.

Starry knight

Aircraft designer, pilot and entrepreneur, Sir Lawrence Wackett rejoins friends and colleagues on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery.

The family scene

Traudi Allen discovers sensitivity, humour and fine draughtsmanship in the portraiture of John Perceval.

Thrown together

Shipmates for years, James Cook and Joseph Banks each kept a journal but neither man shed light on their relationship.

A sketch for some portraits

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

Getting bare

How seven portraits within Bare reveal in a public portrait parts of the body and elements of life usually located in the private sphere.

Jewelled nights

Anne Sanders celebrates the cinematic union of two pioneering australian women.

Study in scarlet

Angus Trumble reflects on the force of nature that was Helena Rubinstein.

Prima facie

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

Painting writing

Dr Sarah Engledow explores the portraits of writers held in the National Portrait Gallery's collection.

You are who?

Joanna Gilmour reflects on merging collections and challenging traditional assumptions around portraiture in WHO ARE YOU.