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Sassoferrato at the National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria has recently acquired a Madonna in prayer of exceptional beauty and quality by the seventeenth-century painter Giovanni Battista Salvi, ‘Il Sassoferrato̵
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A Nabob’s return: the Pybus conversation piece by Nathaniel Dance
The National Gallery of Victoria has recently acquired a magnificent conversation piece of The Pybus family, c.1769, by the British artist Nathaniel Dance (1735–181
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Imperial fashion victims in provincial Egypt: re-dating Egyptian mummy potraits
During the first three centuries of the Christian era, funerary artisans in the Roman province of Egypt produced a unique genre of mummy covering which reflected the multicultural society that existed there…
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William Nicholson The black pansy 1910
William Nicholson was always torn between the need to paint society portraits to maintain his family and his love for humbler still lifes and landscape painting.
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Desirable Things, the private collection of Alfred Felton
Alfred Felton has long been recognised as the benefactor who transformed the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria
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Buying for the Future, Mary Woodall and Italian old master paintings
One must buy for the future, even against public opinion, although it is satisfying when you do buy a picture that’s popular … It’s important to get really top class thing
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The Last Big Artist in Paris, Bernard Buffet
In 1954 the National Gallery of Victoria purchased a major painting by the French artist Bernard Buffet titled simply Owl, 1950 (fig. 1)
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Remembering Top Arts 2001
As an artist and photographer I look back fondly to when I was selected for Top Arts 2001.
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The Quick and the Dead, Purchasing Indigenous art 1988–1990
The new public prominence of Aboriginal art remains the greatest single revolution in the past quarter-century in Australian art
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Stowed Away: Emmanuel Frémiet’s Gorilla carrying off a woman
Early in 1905 the National Gallery of Victoria’s director, Bernard Hall, charged with making the first purchases for Melbourne under the terms of the newly granted Felton Bequest, travelled to England and…
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Australian idyll: domesticating the Victorian landscape
In 1957 a photo-essay by Jeff Carter in People magazine represented seasonal hop-picking in the Ovens Valley in north–eastern Victoria in pastoral terms (fig.
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A human, democratic art: three realist artists 1944–1947
In 1944 the three Melbourne realist artists, Noel Counihan (1919–1986), Yosl Bergner (1920–) and Vic O’Connor (1918–) wrote, ‘We in fact work together as a group&
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Obituary: Ursula Hoff, AO, OBE 1909–2005
With the death of Dr Ursula Hoff in Melbourne on 10 January 2005, the National Gallery of Victoria has lost the person who, more than any other individual, shaped its…
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Charles Blackman’s Feet beneath the table
Charles Blackman is renowned for his images that explore the duality of life: innocence and experience, fantasy and fact, dreams and nightmares, beauty and savagery
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Top Arts 2014
The dream started on the way to an annual Top Arts tour in 2013. “I’ll be in the exhibition next year guys, it’ll be a life-sized lino