Women in Britain had long used visual and material culture to make statements about social injustice.1 Deborah Cherry, Beyond the Frame: Feminism and Visual Culture, Britain, 1850–1900, Routledge, London, 2000…

This essay was originally published in the 2019 July/August edition of NGV Magazine.

In his 1956 autobiography, Christian Dior reflected on ‘the miracle of fashion’, commenting that ‘in the world today haute couture is one of the last repositories of the marvellous and…

Florence Ada Fuller is an artist scarcely recognised today.

In 2019 the National Gallery of Victoria acquired a fascinating portrait by the unheralded eighteenth-century Scottish portrait painter Anne Forbes (1745-1834).

It is an enchanting scene.

Top Arts 2020 showcases the artistic achievements of young Victorian artists

Dreams are incredibly powerful. I think only in dreams are we free and naked.

Throughout the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, Japan’s arts, crafts and design have been heralded for their high level of technical skill, sophisticated use of materials and simple design aestheti

In 1901 Augustus John accepted a teaching post at an art school affiliated with Liverpool’s University College, and he and his wife Ida relocated to Merseyside, Englan

The 1920s and 1930s saw Augustus John triumph as a portraitist.

In 1889 the NGV’s Trustees asked the Governor of Victoria, Sir Henry Loch, during a visit he was making to England, to enquire whether Queen Victoria would sit for a…

In 2019 a selection of twenty-seven of David Hockney’s iPhone and iPad drawings, created over the period 2009–12, were generously gifted by the artist to the Gall

One of the last narrative compositions that Frank Holl ever exhibited publicly, Home again!, 1881, struck English audiences as an unusually cheerful work when the painting was shown at London’s Royal Academy in 1881. Writing for the Athenaeum, one critic at the time remarked upon the manner in which ‘Always lugubrious, this artist has here indulged in what is, for him, unprecedented action, energy and movement among the figures, and a good, bright, out-of-door effect of daylig

The ancient historian Livy told of the legend of a vast chasm opening in the Roman Forum that threatened to destroy the city. The Gods decreed that the fissure would not be repaired until the city sacrificed its greatest treasure. The courageous soldier Marcus Curtius declared that this treasure was in fact the valour of the Roman people. He then mounted his horse and rode headlong into the chasm, which then closed over forever. Livy’s epic tale spoke of stoicism in the face of doom, and lauded an individual’s ultimate sacrifice for the greater g