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Office romance

Finalist, MDPA 2014

Winner, MDPA 2013

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.


National Portrait Gallery staff introduce their favourite portraits from the exhibition.

It’s curious that one of the writers most associated with the toughness of Australian bush life was himself not an exponent of the matted, rugged bushman sort of beard.

It wasn’t uncommon for the pro-beard fraternity of the mid nineteenth century to cite beards as a sign of wisdom on the grounds that Socrates and other ancient philosophers had worn them.

Although the tough, weathered, hard-drinking bushmen of the kind mythologised by writers like Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson are popularly associated with the character of late nineteenth century Australia, it was also a time when alternative ideas about identity began to come into play.

Absence rends the heart asunder

Desirable outcomes, undesirable origins

The late Georgian and early Victorian working classes often bought their food in ale-houses, chop-houses and ‘penny pie shops’, or purchased their meals day after day in the streets.


Press releases for media.


More than eighty treasures from the National Portrait Gallery London will travel to Canberra for a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from March 2022.