-
John Henry Connell: the man and his collection
The National Gallery of Victoria’s Connell Collection provoked great excitement when first exhibited in 19
-
Thea Proctor in London 1910–11: her early involvement with fashion
‘Clothes,’ said Miss Proctor, sitting in that white-walled studio of hers where the woodcuts make such attractive spashes [sic] of yellow and magenta and vermilion, ‘fashionable clothes are too much t
-
Rediscovering Beneath the arena – a major work by Karl von Piloty at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
When Karl von Piloty’s large canvas painting Beneath the arena, 1882, arrived in Melbourne in 1888 to be exhibited at the German Gallery of the Centennial International Exhibition, it was greeted with excitement and…
-
Zoffany as punster and prankster: some comments on his David with the head of Goliath
In about 1750 the young Johan Zoffany1He was born Johann Joseph Zauffalӱ at Frankfurt-am-Main in 1733, the son of the Bohemian-born Franz Zauffalӱ, who was originally a cabinet-maker, but later…
-
John Peter Russell’s Dr Will Maloney
John Peter Russell’s Dr Will Maloney, 1887, came into the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in 1943 (fig. 1
-
Rembrandt etchings on oriental papers: papers in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria
From at least 1647 onwards, Rembrandt executed many of his prints on papers of oriental origin
-
The reception of Chinese Buddhist sculpture in the West
Two Chinese figures at the National Gallery of VictoriaIt was not until the present century that Buddhist sculpture, in common with most other forms of Chinese art, was recognised by…
-
Unique pair of Chantilly porcelain figures
This apparently unique pair of Chantilly figures was last recorded in the Paris 1913 sale catalogue of the Halinbourg collectio
-
An introduction to the paintings and watercolours by Julian Rossi Ashton at the National Gallery of Victoria
The artist should preach the beautiful in our commonplace and everyday existence.
-
From old world to new: English and Australian responses to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s The vintage festival
In early 1871, two versions of The vintage festival were sent to Ernest Gambart, the prominent Belgian art dealer, as part of the second group of pictures he had commissioned from Sir Lawrence…
-
A Seventeenth-century Anglo-Venetian vessel, with Dutch engraving, at The National Gallery of Victoria
During the sixteenth century, glassmaking in Europe underwent a significant change, which coincided with the vast political and social changes that were sweeping the continent.
-
A turreted berg : an Antarctic photograph by Frank Hurley
Gazing at the grey curtains of fog from the deck of our ship, so tiny in the surrounding vastness, we felt like Argonauts whose quest had led to the World’s…
-
J. W. Waterhouse’s Ulysses and the Sirens: breaking tradition and revealing fears
In the picture which has been purchased for the National Gallery, Mr Waterhouse has selected for illustration the well-known passage in the twelfth book of the ‘Odyssey’ of Homer, in…
-
Pierre Soulages, the Nouvelle École de Paris, and Painting 202 x 143 cm, 6 November 1967
Pierre Soulages is internationally famous as the most important living French painter of the postwar École de Paris. And yet, Soulages emphatically rejects this associati
-
A Bernini self-portrait?
In 1976 the National Gallery of Victoria acquired from the dealer David Carritt in London a portrait of a young man, a work identified as a self-portrait of the young…