National Gallery of Victoria

19th century

Nicholas Chevalier's unrealised 1860 vision for the National Gallery next to the State Library building

Victoria gained independence from New South Wales in 1850 (effective 1 July 1851). In the wake of the Victorian gold rush that began in (August) 1851, it became Australia's richest colony, and Melbourne, its capital, the largest and wealthiest city in Australia. With Melbourne's rapid growth came calls for the establishment of a public art gallery, and in 1859, the Government of Victoria pledged £2000 for the acquisition of plaster casts of sculpture.^[1] These works were displayed in the Museum of Art, opened by Governor Sir Henry Barkly in May 1861 on the lower floor of the south wing of the Public Library (now the State Library of Victoria) on Swanston Street.^[2] Further money was set aside in the early 1860s for the purchase of original paintings by British and Victorian artists. These works were first displayed in December 1864 in the newly opened Picture Gallery, which remained under the curatorial administration of the Public Library until 1882.^[3][4] Grand visions for a gallery building at Lonsdale and Swanston Street were drawn by Nicholas Chevalier in 1860 and Frederick Grosse in 1865 featuring an enormous and elaborate library and gallery, however such visions were never realised.

Entrance to the McArthur Gallery on Swanston Street, which was the first permanent home of the collection, now home to the painting collection of the State Library of Victoria.

On 24 May 1874, the first purpose built gallery, known as the McArthur Gallery, opened in the McArthur room of the State Library, and the following year, the Museum of Art was renamed the National Gallery of Victoria.^[2] The McArthur Gallery was only ever intended as a temporary home until the much grander vision was to be realised.^[5] However such an edifice did not eventuate and the complex was instead developed incrementally over several decades.

The National Gallery of Victoria Art School, associated with the gallery, was founded in 1867 and remained the leading centre for academic art training in Australia until about 1910.^[6] The School's graduates went on to become some of Australia's most significant artists.

In 1887, the Buvelot Gallery (later Swinburne Hall) was opened, along with the Painting School studios. In 1892, two more galleries were added: Stawell (now Cowen) and La Trobe.^[2]

20th century

The world's largest stained-glass ceiling in the NGV's Great Hall, designed by Australian artist Leonard French^[7]

The gallery's collection was built from both gifts of works of art and monetary donations. The most significant, the Felton Bequest, was established by the will of Alfred Felton and from 1904, has been used to purchase over 15,000 works of art.^[8]

Since the Felton Bequest, the gallery had long held plans to build a permanent facility, however it was not until 1943 that the State Government chose a site, Wirth's Park, just south of the Yarra River.^[9] £3 million was put forward in February 1960 and Roy Grounds was announced as the architect.^[10]

In 1959, the commission to design a new gallery was awarded to the architectural firm Grounds Romberg Boyd. In 1962, Roy Grounds split from his partners Frederick Romberg and Robin Boyd, retained the commission, and designed the gallery at 180 St Kilda Road (now known as NGV International). The new bluestone clad building was completed in December 1967^[11] and Victorian premier Henry Bolte officially opened it on 20 August 1968.^[12] One of the features of the building is the Leonard French stained glass ceiling, one of the world's largest pieces of suspended stained glass, which casts colourful light on the floor below. The water-wall entrance is another well-known feature of the building.

In 1999, redevelopment of the building was proposed, with Mario Bellini chosen as architect and an estimated project cost of $161.9 million. The proposal was to leave the original architectural fabric intact including the exterior facade and Leonard French stained glass ceiling, but to significantly modernise the interior.^[13] During the redevelopment, many works were moved to a temporary external annex known as NGV on Russell, at the State Library with its entrance on Russell Street.^[2]

21st century

A major fundraising drive was launched on 10 October 2000 to redevelop the ageing facility and although the state government committed the majority of the funds, private donations were sought in addition to federal funding. The drive achieved its aim and secured $15 million from the Ian Potter Foundation on 11 July 2000, $3 million from Lotti Smorgon, $2 million from the Clemenger Foundation, and $1 million each from James Fairfax and the Pratt Foundation.^[14]

NGV on Russell closed on 30 June 2002^[2] to make way for the staged opening of the new St Kilda Road gallery. It was officially opened by premier Steve Bracks on 4 December 2003.^[15]

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia in Federation Square was designed by Lab Architecture Studio to house the NGV's Australian art collection. It opened in 2002. As such, the NGV's collection is now housed in two separate buildings, with Grounds' building renamed NGV International.

Asian art

Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, c. 1830

The NGV's Asian art collection began in 1862, one year after the gallery's founding, when Frederick Dalgety donated two Chinese plates. The Asian collection has since grown to include significant works from across the continent.

Australian art

Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia

The NGV's Australian art collection encompasses Indigenous (Australian Aboriginal) art and artefacts, Australian colonial art, Australian Impressionist art, 20th century, modern and contemporary art.

The 1880s saw the birth and development of the Heidelberg School (also known as Australian Impressionism) in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, and the NGV was well-placed to acquire some of the movement's key artworks, including Tom Roberts' Shearing the Rams (1890), Arthur Streeton's ‘The purple noon's transparent might’ (1896), and Frederick McCubbin's The Pioneer (1904).^[16]

The Australian collection includes works by Charles Blackman, John Brack, Arthur Boyd, Louis Buvelot, Rupert Bunny, Nicholas Chevalier, Charles Conder, David Davies, William Dobell, Russell Drysdale, E. Phillips Fox, John Glover, Eugene von Guerard, Hans Heysen, George W. Lambert, Sydney Long, John Longstaff, Frederick McCubbin, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Margaret Preston, Hugh Ramsay, Tom Roberts, John Russell, Grace Cossington Smith, Arthur Streeton, Fred Williams and others.

A large number of works were donated by Dr. Joseph Brown in 2004 which form the Joseph Brown Collection.

Selected works

• 
  Aboriginal shields
• 
  Eugene von Guerard, Mount Kosciusko, seen from the Victorian border, 1866
• 
  Tom Roberts, Shearing the Rams, 1890
• 
  Arthur Streeton, ‘The purple noon's transparent might’, 1896

International art

NGV International

The NGV's international art collection encompasses European and international paintings, fashion and textiles, photography, prints and drawings, Asian art, decorative arts, Mesoamerican art, Pacific art, sculpture, antiquities and global contemporary art. It has strong collections in areas as diverse as old masters, Greek vases, Egyptian artefacts and historical European ceramics, and contains the largest and most comprehensive range of artworks in Australia.^[17]

The international collection includes works by Bernini, Bordone, Canaletto, Cézanne, Constable, Dali, Correggio, Degas, van Dyck, Gainsborough, Gentileschi, El Greco, Manet, Memling, Modigliani, Monet, Picasso, Pissarro, Poussin, Rembrandt, Renoir, Ribera, Rothko, Rubens, Tiepolo, Giambattista Pittoni, Tintoretto, Turner, Uccello, Veronese and others.

One of the highlights of the NGV's international collection is Auguste Rodin's first cast of his iconic sculpture The Thinker, executed in 1884.^[18]

Selected works

• 
  Jan van Eyck (workshop), Ince Hall Madonna, 1433
• 
  Correggio, Madonna and Child with infant St John the Baptist, 1514–15
• 
  Rembrandt, Two old men disputing, 1628
• 
  Nicolas Poussin, The Crossing of the Red Sea, 1634
• 
  Anthony van Dyck, Rachel de Ruvigny, Countess of Southampton, 1640
• 
  Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, The Banquet of Cleopatra, 1743–44
• 
  Thomas Gainsborough, An officer of the 4th Regiment of Foot, 1776
• 
  J. M. W. Turner, The Red Rigi, 1842
• 
  Edwin Landseer, Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1851
• 
  Jules Bastien-Lepage, October, 1878
• 
  Claude Monet, Vétheuil, 1879
• 
  Camille Pissarro, Boulevard Montmartre, morning, cloudy weather, 1897

Photography

Max Dupain, Sunbaker, 1937

In 1967, the NGV established the first curatorial department dedicated to photography in an Australian public gallery,^[19] one of the first in the world. It now holds over 15,000 works. In that same year, the Gallery acquired the photography collection's first work, Surrey Hills street 1948 by David Moore and in 1969 the first international work was acquired, Nude 1939 by František Drtikol. The first photographer to exhibit solo at the NGV was Mark Strizic in 1968^[20]. Jennie Boddington, a filmmaker, was appointed first full-time curator of photography^[21] in 1972,^[22] possibly only the third such appointment amongst world public institutions.

Prints and drawings

William Blake, Antaeus setting down Dante and Virgil in the Last Circle of Hell, 1824

The NGV's Department of Prints and Drawings is responsible for one third of the gallery's collection. Highlights among the department's holdings include one of the world's largest collections of engravings and woodcuts by Dürer.^[23] The NGV is also said to have one of the most impressive collections of works by William Blake, including 36 of the 102 watercolours he worked on up until his death in 1827 to illustrate the Divine Comedy by Dante, the largest number of works from this series held by any gallery in the world.^[24] Rembrandt and Goya are also well-represented.

As a "National Gallery"

When plans for the construction of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra became firmly established in the 1960s, Australia's state galleries removed the word "national" from their names (for example, the National Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney became the Art Gallery of New South Wales). This naming convention dated back to the 19th century when Australia's colonies were self-governing political entities and had yet to federate. Only the NGV has retained "national" in its name.^[25] This has proven to be somewhat contentious, given that the NGV is technically not a national gallery, and occasionally there have been calls for it to follow the example of the other state galleries. According to former Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, "We won't be renaming the National Gallery of Victoria. It has a great tradition. It is the biggest and best gallery in the country and it's one of the biggest and best in the world."

Picasso theft

A famous event in the history of the gallery was the theft of Pablo Picasso's painting The Weeping Woman in 1986 during the tenure of director Patrick McCaughey. A person or group who identified themselves as the "Australian Cultural Terrorists" claimed responsibility for the removal of the painting in protest against the perceived poor treatment of the arts by the state government of the time. They sought as a ransom the establishment of an art prize for young artists. The painting was returned in a railway locker two weeks later.^[26]

Melbourne Winter Masterpieces

The NGV has held several large exhibitions known as Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibitions, starting with Impressionists: Masterpieces from the Musee d'Orsay in 2004.

NGV Triennial

In 2013 the NGV launched "Melbourne Now", an exhibition which celebrated the latest art, architecture, design, performance and cultural practice to reflect the complex cultural landscape of creative Melbourne. "Melbourne Now" ran from 22 November 2013 – 23 March 2014 and attracted record attendances of 753,071.^[37] Following the success of "Melbourne Now", in 2–14 March the NGV announced a major new initiative, the NGV Triennial. Beginning in the Summer of 2017 and to be held every three years, this ambitious event will be a large-scale celebration of the best of contemporary international art and design.^[38] The inaugural Triennial ran from 15 December 2017 to 15 April 2018, and drew almost 1.3 million visitors during its run, making it the most attended exhibition in the gallery's history.^[39][40][41]