Reminder: Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar Series

This evening: Monday 24 March, 6:30pm
Ted Gott, Portraits of Augustus John in the National Gallery of Victoria.

In 1939 the Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, J. S. MacDonald, wrote forcefully about Augustus John’s life-size 1909 portrait of the Lord Mayor of Liverpool:  ‘the painting is a bad one, and its purchase should not be entertained’. Nonetheless, the painting was subsequently purchased for the NGV by the Felton Bequests’ Committee. Why was opinion divided about the merit of John’s painting, and how did a work that would seem to be a natural fit for a Liverpool collection end up gracing the walls of the NGV in Melbourne?

Dulcie Hollyock Room, Ground Floor, Baillieu Library (Building 177), University of Melbourne, Parkville (map).

Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar Series

Augustus John, Portrait of Harold Chaloner Dowdall, Lord Mayor of Liverpool and his sword-bearer (1909). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Felton Bequest, 1938.

Next week, the Melbourne Portrait Group launches a series of seminars on various aspects of portraiture: we hope it will be the first of many. The series kicks off with a paper from Ted Gott, Senior Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Victoria.