© National Portrait Gallery 2025
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
Getting a head
Magazine article by Alexandra Roginski, 2015
Alexandra Roginski gets a feel for phrenology’s fundamentals.
Sibly irresistible
Magazine article by Alexandra Roginski, 2019
Alexandra Roginski reveals a forceful feminist figure in the colonial period’s slippery science, phrenology.
Princess Alexandra of Denmark (later Queen Alexandra), c. 1862
an unknown artist after Georg Emil Hansen
Portrait, albumen paper carte de visite on card
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2020
Set of 129 Royal Christmas Cards and three miscellaneous items, 1951-2001
an unknown artist
Portrait, offset print (tipped in), letter press (greeting), pen and ink (signature), embossed (royal emblem) on cardboard
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Patricia Tryon Macdonald 2005
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Ned Kelly and death masks
'Judge a person by their cover'
Portrait story
Alexandra Roginski explains the history behind the pseudo-science of phrenology.
Judge a person by their cover
Death masks and phrenology
General content
Alexandra Roginski explains the history behind the pseudo-science of phrenology, popular in the nineteenth century.
Portrait 61
Summer 2018/19
Magazine
Max Dupain's unknown portrait subjects, phrenologist Madame Sibly, Indigenous-European relationships, Thomas Gainsborough and more.
Alexandra Schepisi, 2011
by Anita Beaney
Image
Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary (future Queen Elizabeth II), 1942-1943
Charles Wheeler
Portrait, coloured chalk on artist board
Purchased 2019
Lovely Lillie and Dirty Bertie
Lust
Royal romps: illicit liaisons
Headspace 5
Crystal Gazing
Previous exhibition, 2004
Crystal Gazing: Headspace V, the fifth in the National Portrait Gallery's program of secondary student portrait exhibitions, invites students from Canberra and the surrounding regions to explore the possibilities of portraiture
James Fairfax AO
Biography
James Oswald Fairfax AC (1933-2017) was the eldest son of Sir Warwick Fairfax.
1 portrait in the collection
Rolf de Heer
Biography
Rolf de Heer (b. 1951) was born in Heemskerk, Holland, and migrated to Australia with his family in 1959.
1 portrait in the collection
Rolf de Heer, Adelaide, SA, 2004
John Elliott
Portrait, type C photograph on paper
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2005
John Yu AC
Biography
Dr John Yu (b.1934), retired paediatrician and hospital administrator, was born in Nanking, China and moved to Australia with his parents when he was three years old.
3 portraits in the collection
John Longstaff
Biography
Sir John Longstaff, born in Clunes, Victoria, studied at the NGV school from 1883 to 1887 and thenceforth at Corman's in Paris.
1 portrait in the collection