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Very fine and very like
About Face article
When did notions of very fine and very like become separate qualities of a portrait? And what happens to 'very like' in the age of photographic portraiture?
The Archduke
About Face article
The immediate chain of events that led to the outbreak of the First World War began 100 years ago on June 28.
Grateful admiration and brotherly love
About Face article
In the earliest stages of the Great War, the Royal Pavilion in Brighton was turned into a military hospital, and arrangements made there to accommodate the different dietary and other requirements of Hindu, Sikh and Muslim patients.
Cocky McGrath
About Face article
The long life and few words of a vice-regal cockatoo
Empirical art
About Face article
Several years ago I came across this curious painting on the racks in a distant, dusty corner of the store room in the basement of the Johannesburg Art Gallery in South Africa. Since then the mystery surrounding it has never been far from my mind.
Queen Victoria
About Face article
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.
Portraiture in a Bleak House
About Face article
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.
Facing the feeling
About Face article
Penelope Grist explores the interplay between medicine and portraiture in Vic McEwan’s Face to Face: The New Normal.
The play’s the thing
About Face article
Penelope Grist charts an immersive path through Stuart Spence’s photography.
The personal and the historical
About Face article
Where do we draw a line between the personal and the historical? Although she died in Melbourne in 1975, when I was not quite eleven years old, I have the vividest memories of my maternal grandmother Helen Borthwick.