© National Portrait Gallery 2025
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
Phil May
Biography
Phil May (1864–1903), cartoonist, was born in Leeds and educated there before his family’s financial circumstances saw him leave school and start work at age thirteen.
1 portrait in the collection
Tommy Emmanuel
Biography
Tommy Emmanuel AM (b. 1955), guitarist, was taught to play by his mother and is said to have been a working musician by the age of six.
1 portrait in the collection
Alf Vincent
Biography
Alfred Vincent began working for the Bulletin in 1896, taking over from the renowned Phil May, his idol, with whom he was often - inevitably - unfavourably compared.
1 portrait in the collection
Percy Spence
Biography
Percy Spence, born in Balmain, grew up in Fiji and began art classes in Sydney in about 1888.
1 portrait in the collection
Mervyn Bishop
Biography
Mervyn Bishop (b. 1945), a Murri photographer, began a cadetship with the Sydney Morning Herald in 1963.
6 portraits in the collection
Kenneth W. Catchpole OAM
Biography
Ken Catchpole OAM (1939-2017), former rugby union international, excelled at various sports in his school years in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, but began to show real prowess in rugby as a student at Scot’s College in the 1950s.
1 portrait in the collection
Tom Durkin
Biography
Thomas Coleman Durkin trained at the Williamstown School of Design and started work in Melbourne as an apprentice to an engraver and then a jeweller.
27 portraits in the collection
Charles Haddon Chambers
Biography
Charles Haddon Chambers (1860-1921), playwright and dramatist, grew up in Sydney.
1 portrait in the collection
Gary Foley
Biography
Gary Foley (b. 1950) is a Gumbainggir activist, actor, historian, curator and academic.
2 portraits in the collection