New acquisitions
Acquisitions policy | Vision and policies
The National Gallery of Australia is constantly adding to the national collection, keeping abreast of emerging art as well as expanding existing collections. The highlights featured in each issue of Artonview are displayed here.
Note: Previous acquisitions can be viewed in the overview of each collection area under the Collection tab in the main menu.
Les Blakebrough ceramics
National Gallery of Australia, CanberraGift of Les Blakebrough, 2011, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
The Gallery has recently acquired a group of 50 highly accomplished ceramic works by Les Blakebrough, gifted by the artist. Blakebrough is one of Australia’s most experienced ceramic artists and brings to this group of works a distillation of a number of design themes that have characterised his work over the past
five decades.
Les Blakebrough ceramics
National Gallery of Australia, CanberraGift of Les Blakebrough, 2011, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
The Gallery has recently acquired a group of 50 highly accomplished ceramic works by Les Blakebrough, gifted by the artist. Blakebrough is one of Australia’s most experienced ceramic artists and brings to this group of works a distillation of a number of design themes that have characterised his work over the past
five decades.
David Barclay
producer and retailer
Joseph Forrester
silversmith
Salver 1833
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2011
This presentation salver with its repoussé decoration of thistles, leaves and flowers was one of four similar pieces produced by the Hobart silversmith David Barclay...
John Wilson Carmichael
The rescue of William D’Oyly 1841
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The rescue of William D’Oyly 1841 is a finely painted view of a tropical paradise bathed in a warm golden glow. It includes a hazy sky, shimmering water, exotic vegetation and mountains, conveying the visual experience of intense tropical heat.
George Fordyce Story
Esther and Emma Mather c.1859
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2011
This delicate portrait of Quaker sisters Esther (1849–1939) and Emma Mather (1853–1939) was made by a family friend Dr George Fordyce Story, they called ‘Little Doctor’, Dr Story lived with their grandparents Anna and Francis Cotton on their Kelvedon estate at Swansea on the east coast of Tasmania.
Fiona Foley Badtjala people
Stud Gins 2003
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Fiona Foley, 2011, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gift Program
© Fiona Foley image courtesy of Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane
Large-scale installations such as Badtjala artist Fiona Foley’s Stud Gins 2003 naturally invite viewers to look closer, to investigate detail by enticing them into its boundary.
Bill Viola
Passage into night 2005
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Annabel and Rupert Myer AM in honour of the staff of the National Gallery of Australia, 2011, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
© Bill Viola.
Photograph: Kira Perov
Bill Viola is a leading contemporary artist and pioneer of video art. Since the 1970s, his work has evolved into slow-motion meditations, often referring to art of the past, especially medieval and Renaissance paintings. Fire and water are two of his most consistent images.
Yimam people
Korewori River region, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea
Yipwon
early 20th century
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2011
The Korewori River is a remote tributary flowing from the south into the Sepik River of Papua New Guinea. Even today, this rugged area of dense bush and marshland is seldom visited by outsiders. The Yimam people who live in this region have conceptualised a most extraordinary abstraction of the human form known as Yipwon.
GW Bot
Garden of Gethsemane 2000
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased with the generous assistance of the artist, 2011
Garden of Gethsemane reveals GW Bot’s mysterious, poetic and insistently elegiac approach to the art of the print.
The work draws together several of the artist’s recurrent themes, including that of the garden—the passing through which is analogous for one’s passage through life.
Tony Tuckson
Red on blue and white 1970–73
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of James Erskine, 2011, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
© Tony Tuckson. Licensed by Viscopy
Tony Tuckson is one of Australia’s greatest abstract painters and a pioneer of abstract expressionism in this country. The dynamic quality of his mark-making explores the very nature of painting itself.
Danie Mellor Mamu/Ngagen/Ngajan peoples
A Transcendent Vision
(of life, death and resurrection) 2010
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Danie Mellor, 2011, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gift Program
Danie Mellor’s exquisitely crafted A Transcendent Vision (of life, death and resurrection) is like a Masonic tracing board, incorporating images of Australian native animals. The dominant blue base of the work is overlaid with Masonic symbols and Hebraic letters, and is further offset by the ochre red of some of Australia’s most icon fauna as well as a rainbow lorikeet from the artist’s home state of Queensland.
Hoysala dynasty (11th?mid 14th century)
Sarasvati, Goddess of Arts and Learning early-mid 12th century
Karnataka, India
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased with the assistance of Pauline and John Gandel 2011
Sarasvati is the beloved Hindu goddess of arts and learning. One of the most important figures in Indian art, the goddess is a serene and ancient form of the great Mother Goddess or Devi—the power of the universe and source of creation. Sarasvati is closely associated with the powerful Hindu gods Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver. She is also revered...
Fijian Fiji
Kinikini
[club /shield] C.1840-1880
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2011
In pre-Christian Fiji, carvers created an array of weapons for different forms of combat. One of the most extraordinary and technically difficult to produce was the kinikini. Imposing in size, they were carried by only the warrior elite of priests and chiefs. Carved by specialists, matai-ni-malumu, kinikini were expensive ...
Pacific Art
Hawaiian Islands
Hawaiian feather cape, 'ahu'ula probably early 19th century
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2011
The National Gallery has been fortunate in securing one of the last Hawaiian feather capes (‘ahu‘ula) left in private hands. The cape most likely dates from the early nineteenth century. It is built upon a netted backing made from the extremely...
Roy Lichtenstein
Ten dollar bill 1956
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler, 2010
Roy Lichtenstein’s name is synonymous with Pop art. His works stand today as icons of America during the 1960s and 1970s, with his characteristic comic-strip, benday dot imagery having entered the collective subconscious...
Roy Lichtenstein
A Cherokee brave 1952
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler, 2010
Roy Lichtenstein’s name is synonymous with Pop art. His works stand today as icons of America during the 1960s and 1970s, with his characteristic comic-strip, benday dot imagery having entered the collective subconscious...
Howard Taylor
Columns 1970
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
In 1967, Howard Taylor moved from Perth to the small rural community of Northcliffe in Western Australia. Profoundly influenced by his new surroundings, Taylor produced a body of large wooden sculptures that reflect his observations of the tall karri and jarrah forests...
Florence Fuller
Dawn landscape c1905
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2011
A taste for poetic crepuscular pictures was a feature of Federation landscapes and, in Dawn landscape c1905, Florence Fuller depicted a scene in the early hours of the day, with the sun just rising on the horizon. Sheep feed quietly...
Jon Schueler
The first day 1956
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Andrew Salvesen 2010
Jon Schueler attempts perhaps the most ambitious subject possible in The first day 1956. The title refers to the creation of the Earth as narrated in the opening words of the Bible (King James Version), Genesis 1...
Nici Cumpston
Barkindji/Paakintji peoples
Campsite V, Nookamka Lake 2008
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2011
The once rich and thriving environment of the Murray and Darling River system with its clear waterways, lush flora and abundant fauna was home to the Barkindji, Muthi Muthi and Nyampa peoples.Read more
Antony Gormley
Angel of the North (life-size maquette) 1996
Gift of James and Jacqui Erskine 2009
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010 © the artist
Antony Gormley is best known for large public projects, often using his own or others’ bodies as subject matter. His most famous work is the 20-metre steel sculpture, Angel of the North...
Rodney Glick
Everyone no.1 2008
Collection Title: Everyone series
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2009
Everyone no 1 2008 is a larger-than-life sculpture of a woman seated on an ornate golden dais. At 180cm high, she has a significant presence, yet offers us a peaceful smile and holds out pink flowers in her four elegantly posed hands. It appears to be some kind of homage to a deity—albeit one casually attired in pink tracksuit...
Ratanakosin period (1782?)
Thailand
Ravana, King of Langka late 18th? early 19th century
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The Ramayana, one of the great Indian epics, was introduced to Southeast Asia by Indian traders as early as the 8th or 9th century. In Thailand, where it is known as the Ramakien (Glory of Rama), the legend has inspired storytelling, performance and the visual arts for centuries...
Donovan & Overland
Southern Cross brooch c.1898
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The National Gallery of Australia recently acquired an exceptional collection of Australian gold jewellery by most of the leading Western Australian jewellers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Western Australian goldfields and goldmining subject matter pervade...
Donovan & Overland
Marble Bar brooch c.1898
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The National Gallery of Australia recently acquired an exceptional collection of Australian gold jewellery by most of the leading Western Australian jewellers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Western Australian goldfields and goldmining subject matter pervade...
Aronson & Co
Coolgardie brooch c.1896
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The National Gallery of Australia recently acquired an exceptional collection of Australian gold jewellery by most of the leading Western Australian jewellers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Western Australian goldfields and goldmining subject matter pervade...
George Addis
Kalgoorlie brooch 1894-1899
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The National Gallery of Australia recently acquired an exceptional collection of Australian gold jewellery by most of the leading Western Australian jewellers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Western Australian goldfields and goldmining subject matter pervade...
Adolph Kopp
Swan brooch 1892-1904
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The National Gallery of Australia recently acquired an exceptional collection of Australian gold jewellery by most of the leading Western Australian jewellers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Western Australian goldfields and goldmining subject matter pervade...
Thomas Scanlan
Swan brooch 1894-1905
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The National Gallery of Australia recently acquired an exceptional collection of Australian gold jewellery by most of the leading Western Australian jewellers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Western Australian goldfields and goldmining subject matter pervade...
Unknown Western Australian jeweller
Brooch c.1908
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The National Gallery of Australia recently acquired an exceptional collection of Australian gold jewellery by most of the leading Western Australian jewellers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Western Australian goldfields and goldmining subject matter pervade...
Philip Chauncy
Aborigines of King George Sound taken by Philip Chauncy Esq. in 1852 1852
The Wordsworth Collection, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The National Gallery recently acquired an important group of historical works from Western Australia: the Wordsworth Collection. Prior to this, the Gallery’s collection included no oil paintings, watercolours and furniture from early colonial Western Australia …
Edmund DuCane
Toodyay, Green Mount, Western Australia 1854
The Wordsworth Collection, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The National Gallery recently acquired an important group of historical works from Western Australia: the Wordsworth Collection. Prior to this, the Gallery’s collection included no oil paintings …Read more
Edmund Henderson
Perth, Western Australia 1862
The Wordsworth Collection, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The National Gallery recently acquired an important group of historical works from Western Australia: the Wordsworth Collection. Prior to this, the Gallery’s collection included no oil paintings, watercolours and furniture from early colonial Western Australia …
Hans Heysen
Morning light 1913
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
purchased with funds from Ruth Robertson Bequest Fund, 2011 (in memory of Edwin Clive
and Leila Jeanne Robertson)
Morning light shows two monumental gums before a sweeping pastoral vista. The grand old tree in the foreground was a favourite of Heysen’s. He was particularly enamoured of morning light; always up before dawn to catch the changing landscape in early sunlight, such as the effect...
A Sharpshooter
Peel, Peel, Swan River Peel! Very Fine Peel! 1829
The Wordsworth Collection, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
English caricature in printed form was at its most strident in the years leading up to the British settlement in New South Wales. Artists such as James Gillray lampooned political figures, foreign policy, fashion and the foibles of society with a vigour that today …
Robert Seymour (etcher), Thomas Mclean (publisher)
Cousin Thomas, or the Swan River Job 1829
The Wordsworth Collection, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
English caricature in printed form was at its most strident in the years leading up to the British settlement in New South Wales. Artists such as James Gillray lampooned political figures, foreign policy, fashion and the foibles of society with a vigour that today …
EL Kirchner
Bathing scene, Fehmarn, under overhanging trees1913
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
The Poynton Bequest 2011
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) was one of the founding members of the German Expressionist group known as Die Brücke, a bohemian group of artists established in Dresden in 1905. Like his fellow Expressionists, Kirchner rejected academic art…
John Olsen
Butcher’s cart Deia de Mallorca 2010
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
© John Olsen. Licensed by VISCOPY
John Olsen is one of Australia’s most accomplished artists. His work came to the fore in the 1960s with paintings such as the National Gallery’s Sydney sun 1965 and Art Gallery of New South Wales’s Spanish encounter 1960 …
Kenyah or Apo Kayan people
Finial for house or funerary vault early-mid 20th century
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
The largest island in maritime Southeast Asia, Borneo is home to an artistic tradition synonymous with the veneration of ancestral deities and spirits of nature. Objects and textiles made for ritual and everyday use are rich in curvilinear ornamentation and motifs of animals and supernatural creatures—including birds, serpents, dragons and ferocious beasts …
Morris Louis
Nexus II 1959
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Bequest of Marcella Louis Brenner, the artist’s widow 2010
© 1959 Morris Louis
'Nexus' means connection or link. The painting, made in 1959, marks the transition between two series of important paintings by Morris Louis, who created a new style of Abstract Expressionism in the last five years of his short life...
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Moulin Rouge: La Goulue [The Glutton] 1891
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Acquired through the National Gallery of Australia Foundation and the Poynton Bequest, 2010
The appearance of the poster Moulin Rouge: La Goulue on the Parisian streets in 1891 established the reputation of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the French art world …
![image: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Moulin Rouge: La Goulue [The Glutton] 1891
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra](http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/IMAGES/MED/200125.JPG)
Thailand Ratanakosin period
Buddhas of the past and future
banner painting 1820–50
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2009
Buddhas of the past and future is a rare cloth banner painted in Thailand. The paintings were used in Buddhist monasteries, where they were unrolled and displayed on special occasions and for festivals in the Buddhist calendar, to teach and inspire the monks and devotees …
Nora Heysen
Self-portrait 1932
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Nora Heysen (1911–2003) is a highly regarded twentieth-century artist. Her self-portraits are among her most striking contributions to Australian art. They are arresting images of a modern, independent woman that are exquisitely executed with a distinctive and refined realism. This outstanding portrait will be the first self-portrait painting by Heysen to enter the national art collection …
Ralph Balson
Painting 1941
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
Ralph Balson (1890–1964) was one the most progressive Australian artists of his time. In 1941, he held the first solo exhibition in Australia of entirely non-figurative painting …
![image: Rita Angus
Self-portrait [Wanaka] 1939
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased with the assistance of funds from the Sir Otto and Lady Margaret Frankel Bequest 2010](/NewAcquisitions/IMAGES/201364.jpg)
Rita Angus
Self-portrait [Wanaka] 1939
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased with the assistance of funds from the Sir Otto and Lady Margaret Frankel Bequest 2010
Rita Angus (1908–1970) is without doubt one of New Zealand’s most important artists. Her major works are hard to come by and the National Gallery of Australia has been trying to acquire a significant painting for the national collection since the early 1980s …
John Glover
At Matlock—mist rising 1814
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Acquired with the Founding Donor’s Fund 2010
John Glover was undoubtedly Australia’s most important colonial artist before 1850. Indeed, he is ranked as one of the most significant landscape artists of his generation working outside Europe …
Daniel Walbidi
Kirriwirri 2010
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
Daniel Walbidi is a young artist whose composition, colour palette, vision and persistence have drawn international attention to the art of his people and his country. In recent years, he has initiated the art movement at Bidyadanga, a community formerly the La Grange Mission, which is 250 kilometres south of Broome and home primarily to the Karrajarri people …
Valerie Sparks
El Dorado Springs 2007 (detail)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased in memory of Melody Gough 2010
El Dorado Springs is an architectural fantasy by Melbourne photomedia and installation artist Valerie Sparks. It takes its panoramic mural form and inspiration from an 1849 French multi-panel woodblock wallpaper that combined images from America, Europe, Asia and Africa (the National Gallery’s 1805 Dufour et Cie wallpaper was a model for such later nineteenth-century productions) …
![image: Apu Kaz [Dugong mother and calf] 2008
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of The Silk Cut Foundation, 2010](/NewAcquisitions/IMAGES/198976.jpg)
Alick Tipoti
Apu Kaz [Dugong mother and calf] 2008
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of The Silk Cut Foundation, 2010
Alick Tipoti’s 2008 linocut print Apu Kaz [Dugong mother and calf] is stunning in its scale and visual richness. It resonates with the special relationship between the hunters of Zenadh Kes (Western Torres Strait) and the sea’s creatures and expresses some of the respected cultural knowledge and laws that govern those relationships …
![image: Sinhalese community, Sri Lanka
Reliquary stupa [dagoba] 19th century
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010](/NewAcquisitions/IMAGES/200119.jpg)
Sinhalese community, Sri Lanka
Reliquary stupa [dagoba] 19th century
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
Throughout Sri Lanka, reliquaries ranging from architectural monuments to small portable repositories have long been used to hold physical remains—bones, teeth, hair and nails—of the historical Buddha and prominent Buddhist monks and teachers …
AB Webb
21-piece tea set c 1922
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
Afternoon tea on a veranda overlooking the Swan River was one of the pleasures of life in Perth in the 1920s. This 21-piece tea service, perfectly evoking the period and locale, was made by the Calyx Pottery in Western Australia and is one of its most accomplished products …
Michael Cook
Undiscovered #4 2010
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
Michael Cook is from the Bidjara people of south-west Queensland. Although an emerging artist, he has a wealth of photographic knowledge and experience that has gained him national and international recognition …
Jacqueline Ryan
Brooch 2002
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2010
This complex brooch has an intricate hidden geometric structure of gold on which many moveable enamelled gold elements are attached, each independently responding to the wearer’s movements …
Hans Heysen
Spring 1925
private collection
The Members Acquisition Fund has been set up in response to the many members who have expressed interest in contributing more directly to the purchase of works of art for the national art collection …