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Nicholas Harding

Nicholas Harding: 28 portraits features paintings of Robert Drewe, John Bell and Hugo Weaving alongside gorgeously coloured recent oil portraits, delicate gouaches and bold ink and charcoal drawings.

Tracks in the sand

Dr Sarah Engledow discusses Quentin Jones's photograph of Australian author Tim Winton.

Off the wall

Heart of Darkness

Magda Keaney talks with Bill Leak about his bold new portrait of Robert Hughes in the National Portrait Gallery collection.

Anthony Anderton

An interview with the photographer.

The bright-eyed Mariner

Time and light

This sample of 56 photographs takes in some of the smallest photographs we own and some of the largest, some of the earliest and some of the most recent, as well as multiple photographic processes from daguerreotypes to digital media.

Cooey! An Australian Song

"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.

Judicial portraits

Leslie Moran investigates the portraits of judges in the National Portrait Gallery's collection.

Maria Caroline Brownrigg

At first glance, this small watercolour group portrait of her two sons and four daughters by Maria Caroline Brownrigg (d. 1880) may seem prosaic, even hesitant

Expect the unexpected

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

Trumble's way

At the end of a summer break one is tempted to say that there is nothing much to report. Isn’t one restful holiday very much like another?

Donated duo

Dr Sarah Engledow writes about the gift of two striking paintings by the Australian artist Ken Done AM.

The Thyssen Art Macabre

Books seldom make me angry but this one did. At first, I was powerfully struck by the uncanny parallels that existed between the Mellons of Pittsburgh and the Thyssens of the Ruhr through the same period, essentially the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Portrait Donors

Doodles of the Diva

Three tiny sketches of Dame Nellie Melba in the NPG collection were created by the artist who was to go on to paint the most imposing representation of the singer: Rupert Bunny.