The Melbourne Portrait Group is a Melbourne-based initiative emerging from the ARC-funded research project Humankind: Transforming identity in Australian and British portraits, 1700-1900 in the National Gallery of Victoria. Its purpose is to promote news and commentary on the subject of portraiture and to provide a network for portraiture scholars, including researchers, curators, museum professionals and conservators. Although based in Melbourne, the Melbourne Portrait Group aims to connect portrait specialists across Australia and further afield.
Call for Papers | Conference: ‘Human Kind: Transforming Identity in British and Australian Portraits, 1700-1914’
Inspired by the outstanding collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, this interdisciplinary conference will be the largest gathering of international and Australian scholars to focus on portraits. It will provide a unique opportunity to explore both British and Australian portraits through a dynamic interchange between academics and curators.
September 8-11 2016, University of Melbourne and National Gallery of Victoria
Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Eugene Barilo von Reisberg: ‘Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Portraiture in the Age of Social Mobility’
Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Portrait of Queen Victoria (1843, detail, collection of HM Queen Elizabeth II); Portrait of Princess Tatiana Yusopova (1858m detail, St Petersburg: The State Hermitage); Portrait of Mrs Philip Vanderbyl (1866, detail, private collection).
Eugene Barilo von Reisberg (Art History Program, School of Culture & Communication), PhD Completion Seminar: ‘Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Portraiture in the Age of Social Mobility’.
Wednesday 16 December 2015, 6:00pm
University of Melbourne (Parkville), Baillieu Library, Dulcie Hollyock Room.
Lecture | Barbara Bryant: ‘Australia’s Pre-Raphaelite Collections: the People behind the Portraits
John Everett Millais, ‘Cecil Webb’, 1887. Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria. Gift of the David Blanche family and Michael Blanche family in memory of Arthur and Yvonne Blanche through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2009.
Barbara Bryant: ‘Australia’s Pre-Raphaelite Collections: the People behind the Portraits’.
Thursday 2 July, 6:30-7:30pm
NGV International, Ground Level, Clemenger Auditorium
Cost $16 M / $20 A / $18 C, Code P1549, Ph +61 3 8662 1555, 10am–5pm daily Continue reading
Collaboratory | Reading the Face: Image, Text and Emotion | University of Melbourne, 2-4 June 2015
Liberale da Verona, ‘Scene from a Novella’ (detail). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The face is one of the most intense sites for the expression and communication of emotion. That intensity generates millions of representations of the face, in a range of textual, dramatic, visual, cinematic and material forms. This collaboratory will bring together research on representations of the expressive face, from the medieval to the modern world, from illumination and early print culture through to contemporary graphic novels, non-fiction and cinema. Continue reading
Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Dr Vivien Gaston: ‘Double Identity: William Orpen’s portrait of George C. Beresford (c. 1900) in the National Gallery of Victoria’.
- William Orpen, ‘Portrait of George C. Beresford’, c. 1900. 135 x 76.8 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Felton Bequest 1928.
Dr Vivien Gaston: ‘Double Identity: William Orpen’s portrait of George C. Beresford (c. 1900) in the National Gallery of Victoria.’
Thursday 30 April 2015, 6:45pm.
University of Melbourne, Baillieu Library, Dulcie Hollyock Room.
CHANGE OF VENUE: MPG Seminar on Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones, Portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes, 1895-96. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
Emily Wubben, ‘Artistic Souls: Baronne Madeleine Deslandes and her portrait by Edward Burne-Jones’
Monday 1 December, 6:30pm.
CHANGE OF VENUE: Visual Culture Resource Centre, 3rd Floor (next door to Room 344), East Tower, John Medley Building.
Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Emily Wubben: ‘Artistic Souls: Baronne Madeleine Deslandes and her portrait by Edward Burne-Jones’
Edward Burne-Jones, Portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes, 1895-96. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
Emily Wubben, ‘Artistic Souls: Baronne Madeleine Deslandes and her portrait by Edward Burne-Jones’
Monday 1 December, 6:30pm.
Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Alison Inglis: Portraiture and the Colonial Collection
‘Additions to the Public Library buildings’, Australasian Sketcher, 18 April 1889 State Library of Victoria)
Associate Professor Alison Inglis, ‘Portraiture and the Colonial Collection: Searching for Portraits in the National Gallery of Victoria in the Nineteenth Century
Monday 10 November, 6:30pm. Continue reading
Call for Papers: Portraiture Conference
Portraiture as Interaction: The Spaces and Interfaces of the British Portrait
The Huntington, San Marino, California, 11–12 December 2015
Proposals due by 7 November 2014
A symposium jointly organized by the Yale Center for British Art, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the Huntington
This symposium has been inspired by the important collections of British portraits at the Huntington Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, and by an upsurge of scholarly interest in the interactive nature of portraiture—both in its intrinsic character and as a curatorial construct. Continue reading
Call for papers: Portraiture Panel at ISECS 2015
Pictures in Motion: Portraiture around the World during the Long Eighteenth Century
14th Congress of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies: Opening Markets, Trade and Commerce in the Eighteenth Century.
Rotterdam, 26-31 July 2015.
Proposals due by 12 January 2014 (earlier submissions are encouraged) Continue reading
Melbourne Portrait Group 