Search / joanna 20gilmour

The animating signature

Joanna Gilmore delights in the affecting drawings of Mathew Lynn.

The Dissecting Room

Joanna Gilmour accounts for Australia’s deliciously ghoulish nineteenth century criminal portraiture. 

Paper weight

Joanna Gilmour delves into a collection display that celebrates the immediacy and potency of drawing as an art form in its own right.

Nocturnal animals

Joanna Gilmour explores the enticing urban shadows cast by artists Martin Lewis and Edward Hopper.

Expect the unexpected

Joanna Gilmour revels in accidental artist Charles Rodius’ nineteenth century renderings of Indigenous peoples.

Love in the extreme

Joanna Gilmour reveals love’s more intense manifestations in the tale of Lord Kenelm and Venetia Digby.

Alternative virtue

Joanna Gilmour presents John Kay’s portraits of a more infamous side of Edinburgh.

The shipwright's arms

Joanna Gilmour explores the life and times of convict-turned-artist William Buelow Gould.

Twin chics

Joanna Gilmour on the exuberant union of fashion pioneers Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, captured in luminescent splendour by artist Carla Fletcher.

Take thy face hence

Joanna Gilmour travels through time to explore the National Portrait Gallery London’s masterpieces in Shakespeare to Winehouse.

Illuminating history

Joanna Gilmour reflects on 25 years of collecting at the National Portrait Gallery.

Little women

Joanna Gilmour looks beyond the ivory face of select portrait miniatures to reveal their sitters’ true grit.

Political profiles

Joanna Gilmour examines the prolific output of Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin, and discovers the risk of taking a portrait at face value.

You are who?

Joanna Gilmour reflects on merging collections and challenging traditional assumptions around portraiture in WHO ARE YOU.

Secure the shadow ere the substance fade

The tragic tale of Tom Wills, the ‘inventor’ of Australian Rules Football.

Material culture

The Rajah Quilt’s narrative promptings are as intriguing as the textile is intricate.

Presence and absence

The art of Australia’s colonial women painters affords us an invaluable, alternative perspective on the nascent nation-building project.

Augustus serendipitous

The London-born son of an American painter, Augustus Earle ended up in Australia by accident in January 1825. 

Home truths

Despite once expressing a limited interest in the self portrait, the idea of it has figured strongly in much of Tracey Moffatt's work and has done so in some of her most distinctive and compelling images.

Showing character

Joanna Gilmour on Tom Durkin playing with Melbourne's manhood.

No small wonder

Joanna Gilmour describes how artist Sam Leach works on a small scale to grand effect.

Costantini's convictions

Jo Gilmour uncovers endearing authenticity in the art of a twice-transported Tasmanian.

The house, the horse, the wife and the offspring

Joanna Gilmour writes about the portraiture of the colonial artist William Nicholas.

Figurative foundation

Joanna Gilmour explores the life and art of the Australian artist Janet Dawson.

Like wow

Joanna Gilmour explores the life of female Australian surfing legend Isabel Letham.

Finest quality

Joanna Gilmour explores the life of Chinese-Australian businessman and philanthropist Quong Tart.

High & Bligh

Joanna Gilmour explores the 1790 portrait of William Bligh by Robert Dodd.

Naked ambition

Joanna Gilmour dives into the life of Australian swimming legend Annette Kellerman.

In good company

Jean Appleton’s 1965 self portrait makes a fine addition to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection writes Joanna Gilmour.

Off her own bat

Joanna Gilmour profiles Violet Teague, whose sophisticated works hid her originality and non-conformity in plain sight.

Queen of cartes

Joanna Gilmour discusses the role of the carte de visite in portraiture’s democratisation, and its harnessing by Victoria, the world’s first media monarch.

Worth her salt

Jerrold Nathan's portrait of Jessie Street shows the elegant side of a many-faceted lady.

Of ice and men

Frank Hurley's celebrated images document the heroism and minutiae of Australian exploration in Antarctica.

The aviatrix

Joanna Gilmour explores the extraordinary life of Australian female aviator Nancy Bird Walton AO OBE

A man of superior attainments

Joanna Gilmour explores the life of a colonial portrait artist, writer and rogue Thomas Griffiths Wainewright.

Small worlds

Bess Norriss Tait created miniature watercolour portraits full of character and life.

Chance encounter

Joanna Gilmour explores the life and times of one of Melbourne's early socialites, Jessie Eyre Williams.

A rogue's calling card

Joanna Gilmour explores the stories behind the ninteenth-century carte de visites of bushrangers Frank Gardiner and Fred Lowry.

You beauty

Joanna Gilmour explores the fact and fictions surrounding the legendary life of Irish-born dancer Lola Montez.

Seeing stars

Joanna Gilmour explores photographic depictions of Aboriginal sportsmen including Lionel Rose, Dave Sands, Jerry Jerome and Douglas Nicholls.

Fine and dandy

Whether the result of misadventure or misdemeanour, many accomplished artists were transported to Australia where they ultimately left a positive mark on the history of art in this country.

Private practice

Pretty in peach

The importance of being bearded

Joanna Gilmour discovers that the beards of the ill-fated explorers Burke and Wills were as epic as their expedition to traverse Australia from south to north.

Moving in creative circles

Harold Cazneaux's portraits of influential Sydneysiders included Margaret Preston and Ethel Turner, both important figures in the development of ideas about Australian identity and culture.

South-bound and down

Joanna Gilmour recounts the story of ill-fated sea voyages in the early stages of the Antipodean colony.

Private virtues public lives

Family affections are preserved in a fine selection of intimate portraits.

Duty bound

Joanna Gilmour explores the life of colonial women Lady Ellen Stirling, Eliza Darling, Lady Eliza Arthur, Elizabeth Macquarie and Lady Jane Franklin.

Fits of delicacy and despair

Henry Mundy's portraits flesh out notions of propriety and good taste in a convict colony.

Portrait 63

Rod McNicol's method and motivation, 19th century Indigenous peoples, Barrie Cassidy on Bob Hawke, five generations of the Kang family from Korea and more.

Portrait 68

Rebecca Ray on Robert Fielding’s Mayatjara series, Jennifer Higgie on Alice Neel, Elspeth Pitt chats with Yvette Coppersmith, Vincent Fantauzzo on virtual sittings with Hugh Jackman and more.

Portrait 61

Max Dupain's unknown portrait subjects, phrenologist Madame Sibly, Indigenous-European relationships, Thomas Gainsborough and more.

Portrait 60

Ralph Heimans on his portraits, and features on Louis Kahan, Helena Rubinstein, Judy Cassab and Tasmanian convicts.

Portrait 62

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2019, the iconoclastic Japanese figures Yukio Mishima and Tamotsu Yato, Angélica Dass’ Humanæ project and more.

Portrait 65

Hugh Ramsay, the fashion of Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, Peter Wegner's centenarian series, John and Elizabeth Gould's family connections, Karen Quinlan's top five portraits and more.

Portrait 69

In conversation with Aretha Brown, Pieter Roelofs on Vermeer, humanoid robots, the nationwide search for Archibald portraits, and 25 years of collecting at the National Portrait Gallery.

Portrait 64

Marian Anderson, emerging photographer Charles Dennington, piscatorial portraits, and the poignant path of photographer Polixeni Papapetrou and more.

Portrait 66

The Huxleys, National Portrait Gallery London’s masterpieces, Jennifer Higgie on portraits of women by women, Tamara Dean, Bangarra, Glynis Jones on fashion photographers, and NPG/NGV collaboration.

Portrait 67

William Yang on his autobiographical self portraits, David Parker's 1970s and 80s Melbourne music photographs, seven-time NPPP finalist Chris Budgeon, and Benjamin Warlngundu Ellis.

To startle the eye

National Photographic Portrait Prize judge Joanna Gilmour previews the 2012 exhibition.

Surface tension

Joanna Gilmour on the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2013.

I am mine

Dr Christopher Chapman, curator and judge of the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2009 contextualises the themes of the exhibition.

More cash than dash

Joanna Gilmour describes how colonial portraitists found the perfect market among social status seeking Sydneysiders.

Bloodlines

Michelle Fracaro describes Lionel Lindsay's woodcut The Jester (self-portrait).

The story of us

Gallery directors Karen Quinlan and Tony Ellwood talk to Penelope Grist about the NPG and NGV collaborative exhibition, Who Are You: Australian Portraiture.

Out of the shadows

Joanna Gilmour profiles the life and times of the shutter sisters May and Mina Moore.

Sea legged frogs

Joanna Gilmour describes some of the stories of the individuals and incidents that define French exploration of Australia and the Pacific.

20 20

Sarah Engledow picks some favourites from a decade of the National Photographic Portrait Prize.

Australia’s great internationalists

Penelope Grist explores the United Nations stories in the Gallery’s collection.

Big bouquet of Blackmans

Dr. Sarah Engledow explores the context surrounding Charles Blackman's portrait of Judith Wright, Jack McKinney and their daughter Meredith.

Man of war

Tedi Bills talks to George Gittoes about canvassing conflict.

Getting bare

How seven portraits within Bare reveal in a public portrait parts of the body and elements of life usually located in the private sphere.