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Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
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Banksia and grevillea
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Portraits can render honour to remarkable men and women, but there are other ways.
Missing Persons
Thomas Woolner in Australia
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Desperately seeking Woolner medallions
Giving a dam
True south #1
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Ensconced and meditative in crisp Tasmania, Joanna Gilmour pays tribute to passionate green advocate and photographer Olegas Truchanas.
Queen Victoria
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Last Sunday I had the privilege of appearing at the Canberra Writers’ Festival in conversation with Julia Baird. The subject of our session was Julia’s recent biography, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman who Ruled an Empire.
A bear of great substance
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Just in time for Christmas, Angus reflects on the most special present he has ever received.
Roam alone
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Jon Muir, adventurer and Portrait Gallery Collection subject, really knows about isolation.
Indexing, the art of
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The first index I created was for my first book, and, to my astonishment, that was almost twenty-five years ago.
Inditchenous beestes of New Olland
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A remarkable undated drawing by Edward Lear (1812–88) blends natural history and whimsy.
School portraits
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Inga Walton sheds light on a portraiture collection usually only seen by students and teachers at Melbourne University.
The National Portrait Gallery's 20th Anniversary
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Last month we marked the twentieth anniversary of the formal establishment of the National Portrait Gallery, the tenth of the opening of our signature building, and the fifth of our having become a statutory authority under Commonwealth legislation.
The stately lotus
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I spent much of my summer holiday at D’Omah, on the outskirts of Yogyakarta. Lotus and waterlilies sprout in extraordinary profusion in artful ponds amid palms and deep scarlet ginger flowers.
Portraiture in a Bleak House
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It may seem an odd thing to do at one’s leisure on a beautiful tropical island, but I spent much of my midwinter break a few weeks ago re-reading Bleak House.
The Rothschilds, the Montefiores, and the Victorian Gold Rush
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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.