© National Portrait Gallery 2025
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
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.
Missing Persons
Thomas Woolner in Australia
About Face article
Desperately seeking Woolner medallions
The medallion
About Face article
In recent years I have become fascinated by the so-called Sydney Cove Medallion (1789), a work of art that bridges the 10,000-mile gap between the newly established penal settlement at Port Jackson and the beating heart of Enlightenment England.
Goods and chattels
About Face article
I have been reading systematically through the ads in the earliest issues of the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, such a rich vein of information about certain aspects of daily life in Regency Sydney.
Cooey! An Australian Song
About Face article
"Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey—Love has caught the strain, Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey—it whispers back again." The “Australian lady” who composed these fruity lyrics was none other than Desda— Jane Davies, sometime Messiter (née Price) of Leddicott, Lavender Bay.
Diseased curiosity
Captain Moonlite et al on trial for murder
About Face article
Just after 10.00 o'clock on 3 December 1879, four prisoners were brought from their cells at Darlinghurst Gaol and placed in the dock of a courtroom heaving with agitated spectators
Seeing stars
Celebrating Science Week
About Face article
It has been suggested that Sir Thomas Brisbane’s interest in the New South Wales governorship was as attributable to his passion for astronomy as to the desirability of the position as a prestigious career move.
William Bligh
About Face article
The life of William Bligh offers up a handful of the most remarkable episodes in the history of Britain’s eighteenth and early nineteenth-century maritime empire.
The Bath Butterfly
About Face article
The caricaturist and engraver James Gillray's biting satires about Sir Joseph Banks.
Autumn in Canberra
About Face article
In Persuasion (1818), a long walk on a fine autumn day affords Anne Elliot an opportunity to ruminate wistfully and at great length upon declining happiness, youth and hope.
Dance like everyone’s watching
About Face article
Penelope Grist’s spirits soar with Lisa Tomasetti’s Dancers in the Streets series.
The National Photographic Portrait Prize turns ten
About Face article
It is now a little more than 178 years since the French Academy of Sciences was made aware of the invention of the daguerreotype process.
Cherish the brethren
About Face article
Fortunately, perhaps, there is no instruction manual for newly appointed art museum directors.
Robert Oatley AO
1928–2016
About Face article
The National Portrait Gallery mourns the loss of one our most generous benefactors, Robert Oatley AO.
Waterloo and Mrs. Moore
About Face article
Beyond the centenary of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli, a number of other notable anniversaries converge this year. Waterloo deserves a little focussed consideration, for in the decades following 1815 numerous Waterloo and Peninsular War veterans came to Australia.
Audacity, audacity, audacity
About Face article
Angus delves into the biographies of two ambitious characters; Sir Stamford Raffles and Sir John Pope-Hennessy.