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Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
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Charles, 2015
by Amiel Courtin-Wilson
General content
Winner, DPA 2016
Extraordinary airmen make aviation history
Passion
Charles is my wingman
Rod McNicol
Winner, National Photographic Portrait Prize 2012
General content
Rod McNicol on photographing Jack Charles.
Ron Mueck
More about In the flesh artists
Ron Mueck grew up in Melbourne and began a career in puppetry and special-effects based in the US and then London. In the mid-1990s Charles Saatchi commissioned four major works including Dead dad, which were exhibited in Saatchi’s exhibition ‘Sensation’ at the Royal Academy, London and which travelled to Berlin and Brooklyn.
Capital Cool
Stop in all the byways, playin' rock 'n roll
General content
Outsiders tend to give Canberra a bad rap: sterile, plagued by politicians, a comatose capital for professionals and academics. Nick Cave once said he didn’t like the city because there were too many punks.
The Winner of the Digital Portraiture Award 2016 is...
2 December 2016
Archived media releases 2016
The winner of the Digital Portraiture Award 2016 has been announced. Congratulations to Amiel Courtin-Wilson for his submission titled Charles.
The Brougham
Beards
A philosopher-style of beard – thick and lengthy; a greyer, hence wiser version of the Burke; and suited to older men who saw themselves as sagacious or statesmanlike.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (1926–2022)
9 September 2022
Media
The National Portrait Gallery is deeply saddened by the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history. Throughout her 70-year reign, Her Majesty represented graciousness, humanity and stability during times of enormous social change.
The Lambert
Beards
Barbering manuals of the turn of the century might describe this style as a ‘Van Dyck’, named after the Dutch painter Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) who is known to have adopted this look.
Literary lovers’ life liaison
Lust
Desire drives forbidden love
New Australians bring creative wealth
Nearest & Dearest
Melbourne’s iconic culture-shapers
Beadles, bellmen and bumbles
General content
For Dempsey’s people their occasional encounters with state power would have been largely through the local parish, which administered the ‘Old Poor Law’.
In the most correct style
Nearest & Dearest
Desirable outcomes, undesirable origins
Friendship’s rhyme and reason
Nearest & Dearest
Poetic trio
Selected images
General content
Take a peek at a selection of the portraits you can see in the exhibition.
The 1850s to the 1880s
Mo and beard timeline
The restrained and cultivated facial hair fashions evident through the first decades of the 1800s were on the wane by the middle of the century, when hirsute faces became mainstream.