© National Portrait Gallery 2025
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
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.
Magna Carta
About Face article
On this day eight hundred years ago at Runnymede near Windsor, King John signed Magna Carta.
Missing Persons
Thomas Woolner in Australia
About Face article
Desperately seeking Woolner medallions
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?
200 Years of Portraiture
About Face article
To celebrate his family bicentenary, Malcolm Robertson looks at the portraiture legacy left by his ancestors.
The consolations of religion
A bushranger meets his maker, 6 January 1826
About Face article
James McCabe provides proof that hanging wasn’t necessarily a fate reserved for the perpetrators of murder and other deeds of darkest hue.
Longest reign
About Face article
Queen Elizabeth II is now the longest-reigning British sovereign
Cocky McGrath
About Face article
The long life and few words of a vice-regal cockatoo
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.
Talking heads
About Face article
In their own words lead researcher Louise Maher on the novel project that lets the Gallery’s portraits speak for themselves.
Centenary of ANZAC
About Face article
Just now we pause to mark the centenary of ANZAC, the day when, together with British, other imperial and allied forces, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Gallipoli at the start of the ill-starred Dardanelles campaign.
Angkor Wat
About Face article
Nothing quite prepares the first-time visitor to Cambodia for the scale and grandeur of the monuments of the ancient Khmer civilisation of Angkor.
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.
Happy New Year
About Face article
This year (in March) we will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the formal establishment of the National Portrait Gallery. In the life of institutions, twenty years is not a long time.
A colourful story from Sideshow Alley
Infamy, the macabre & the portrait
About Face article
From infamous bushranger to oyster shop display, curator Jo Gilmour explores the life of George Melville.
Banksia and grevillea
About Face article
Portraits can render honour to remarkable men and women, but there are other ways.