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Longest reign
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Queen Elizabeth II is now the longest-reigning British sovereign
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.
Tribute: Mary Isabel Murphy
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The Chairman, Board, Director and all the staff of the National Portrait Gallery mourn the loss of our Benefactor, Mary Isabel Murphy.
Magna Carta
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On this day eight hundred years ago at Runnymede near Windsor, King John signed Magna Carta.
The Archduke
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The immediate chain of events that led to the outbreak of the First World War began 100 years ago on June 28.
The cost of living luxuriously
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In 1904, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia purchased as a gift for her sister, Queen Alexandra, a fan composed of two-color gold, guilloché enamel, mother-of-pearl, blond tortoiseshell, gold sequins, silk, cabochon rubies, and rose diamonds from the House of Fabergé in Saint Petersburg.
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.
The mystery of Enoch Arden
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Tennyson's Enoch Arden was inspired by a story that Thomas Woolner passed on to him – but whose story and of whom?
Cocky McGrath
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The long life and few words of a vice-regal cockatoo
Desert Island Discs
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I agonized over the choice of four songs to take with me to the ABC Studios for Alex Sloan’s Canberra 666 afternoon program, a sort of iteration of the old BBC Desert Island Discs.
200 Years of Portraiture
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To celebrate his family bicentenary, Malcolm Robertson looks at the portraiture legacy left by his ancestors.
Dempsey's people
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Those of you who are active in social media circles may be aware that through the past week I have unleashed a blitz on Facebook and Instagram in connection with our new winter exhibition Dempsey’s People: A Folio of British Street Portraits, 1824−1844.
The personal and the historical
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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.
Talking heads
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In their own words lead researcher Louise Maher on the novel project that lets the Gallery’s portraits speak for themselves.
Dance like everyone’s watching
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Penelope Grist’s spirits soar with Lisa Tomasetti’s Dancers in the Streets series.
Stubbs and the horse
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One of the chief aims of George Stubbs, 1724–1806, the late Judy Egerton’s great 1984–85 exhibition at the Tate Gallery was to provide an eloquent rebuttal to Josiah Wedgwood’s famous remark of 1780: “Noboby suspects Mr Stubs [sic] of painting anything but horses & lions, or dogs & tigers.”