© National Portrait Gallery 2025
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
Ned Kelly death mask, date unknown
an unknown artist after Maximilian Kreitmayer
Portrait, cast plaster
Collection: National Portrait Gallery Study Collection, Canberra
Gift of John Molony 2018
Clara Crosbie, aged 12 years, now on exhibition at the Australian Waxworks, c. 1885
Carrington Photo Galleries
Portrait, carte de visite photograph
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of John McPhee 2018
Clara Crosbie, c. 1885
Arthur William Burman
Portrait, carte de visite photograph
Gift of John McPhee 2018
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.
The Waxworks
General content
Waxworks were among the various types of entertainment venue to emerge in Australian cities in the mid-nineteenth century.
The sensational denouement of the case
The Yarra Boot Trunk Tragedy, 12 January 1899
About Face article
The 'Yarra Boot Trunk Tragedy' unfolded a week before Christmas 1898, when some neighbourhood boys noticed a wooden box floating in the river at Richmond.
Charles Summers, late 1860s
Batchelder & Company Photo
Portrait, albumen paper carte de visite
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by Graham Smith 2009
Sideshow Alley
Infamy, the macabre & the portrait
Previous exhibition, 2015
Death masks, post-mortem drawings and other spooky and disquieting portraits... Come and see how portraits of infamous Australians were used in the 19th century.
Philanthropic donations enable otherwise unobtainable acquisition
20 October 2016
Archived media releases 2016
A magnanimous portrait of Helena Rubinstein has been acquired for the National Portrait Gallery’s collection.
Getting a head
Magazine article by Alexandra Roginski, 2015
Alexandra Roginski gets a feel for phrenology’s fundamentals.
Christmas Island
About Face article
This is my last Trumbology before, in a little more than a week from now, I pass to my successor Karen Quinlan the precious baton of the Directorship of the National Portrait Gallery.