Since 1921 the ‘Archibald’ has been a prize for a portrait of any ‘man or woman distinguished in art, letters, science or polities’, painted in the year preceding the award by any artist resident in Australia or New Zealand.

The prize was established as part of the terms of the will of influential journalist J.F. Archibald (1856-1919), co-founder and editor of the Bulletin. It is administered by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and awarded annually. The prize represents a tenth of the profits of Archibald’s estate (in 2008 the prize was AU$50,000).

Controversy

The awarding of the prize has been controversial in some years.

In 1933, the prize, awarded for Charles Wheeler’s Ambrose Pratt, was withdrawn because, according to the Solicitor-General, the winner had painted from a photograph, not from life, and therefore had not fulfilled the requirements of the competition.

In 1944 the prize became the centre of a legal case which dominated the Australian newspapers for several days. Two competitors with traditional views on painting challenged the award made by the trustees in 1943 to William Dobell for his portrait of the artist Joshua Smith. This case was heard before Mr Justice Roper in the NSW Supreme Court, but the plaintiffs’ claim, that the painting was a caricature rather than a portrait and therefore ineligible, was not upheld.

In 1953, students demonstrated against the awarding of the prize for the seventh time to William Dargie.

In 1975, John Bloomfield was awarded the prize for his portrait of the film producer, Tim Burstall. His subsequent statement at a Press interview that he had worked from photographs, and that Burstall had not sat for him, aroused considerable interest. The trustees, in order to clear the air, and concerned that this admission might throw their decision into doubt, referred the matter to the State Attorney-General’s Office, who ruled that working exclusively from photographs violated the intention of the Archibald Trust. The trustees therefore had no alternative but to withdraw the award.

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