Archibald Prize for Portrait Painting is
Australia's Most Popular and Most Coveted Visual Arts Award
Images of Eyes Gallery

The Archibald Prize is regarded as the most important portraiture prize and the most prominent of all arts prizes in Australia.  It began in 1921 after a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor of the Sydney Bulletin during the days of its greatest influence in Australian politics and literary life.  The prize is awarded annually by the Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.    

This prestigious prize has been won by some of Australia's most prominent artists, and the subjects of the winners have been equally celebrated in their fields -- it is Australia's most coveted, most popular, and most talked-about visual arts award, with its first prize of $50,000 and  mainstream media attention.  The media love the prize because, in the past, it has been often surrounded by disagreement, contentiousness, controversy, or scandal.  Many believe that the prize does more than any other single event to stimulate and sustain public interest in the art of portrait painting in Australia.

The prize has historically attracted a good deal of controversy and several court cases.  The most famous was in 1943 when William Dobell's win was challenged because of claims it was a caricature rather than a painting.  In 1938, Max Meldrum criticized the winner saying that women could not be expected to paint as well as men.

A photograph of Clifton Pugh's 1972 Archibald
Prize winning portrait of Gough Whitlam

After Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was dismissed as a result of the Australian constitutional crisis of 1975, he refused to sit for the traditional portrait which is done of Australian Prime Ministers.  He instructed that the 1972 Archibald Prize winning portrait by Clifton Pugh be used instead.  Pugh's portrait hangs today in New Parliament House in Canberra.

In 1975 John Bloomfield's portrait of Tim Burstall was disqualified on the grounds that it had been painted from a blown-up photograph, rather than from life. The prize was then awarded to Kevin Connor.  In 1981 John Bloomfield threatened legal action, claiming that the winner that year, Eric Smith, had not painted his subject from life.  In 1983 John Bloomfield unsuccessfully sued for the return of the 1975 prize.  In 1995 the application form of the Archibald Prize was modified to make it clear that the subject must be painted from life.  In 1997 the painting of the Bananas in Pyjamas television characters by Evert Ploeg was deemed ineligible by the trustees because it was not a painting of a person.  In 2004 Craig Ruddy's image of David Gulpilil was challenged on the basis that it was a charcoal sketch rather than a painting.

[Thanks to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, for the use of the above photograph, and certain portions of above text.]

Cherry Hood, our 200th artist, wins 2002 Archibald Prize

Although we are unable to exhibit Hood's prize-winning portrait, you can see other talked-about watercolor paintings by Cherry Hood (such as the one on the right) in our exhibit of her portraits in Images of Eyes Gallery I.

Page updated Apr 7, 2008

Go to Cherry Hood's exhibit or
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Images of Eyes Gallery - Fine art, art work, and paintings by international artists