Visiting the Archibald Prize and its room full of faces

Every year the Art Gallery of New South Wales fills its rooms with portraits and Sydney argues about them. People who never otherwise set foot in a gallery have opinions on the Archibald Prize, and that is a large part of its charm. It is a prize, an exhibition, a public conversation and, for a few weeks, something close to a sporting event, with its own form guide and its own crowd favourites.

I live a short train ride from the gallery and spend a lot of weekends there. The Archibald is the kind of show where strangers talk to each other in front of the paintings, and listening is half the fun. This is a guide to what the prize is, where it came from, and how to get the most out of a room that can hold dozens of faces at once.

Where the prize came from

Jules François Archibald, usually written J F Archibald, was a journalist and publisher best known as a co-founder and long-time editor of The Bulletin, the Sydney magazine. He died in 1919. In his will he left one tenth of his estate in trust for an annual portrait prize, to be judged by the trustees of the gallery. The same will paid for the Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park, which is worth a detour on the walk from the station.

The gallery quotes the terms of the bequest: the prize goes to the best portrait, "preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in art, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia" in the year before entries close. That old-fashioned sentence still shapes the prize a century on.

The first competition was held in 1921, with the exhibition opening in January 1922. The winner was W B McInnes, for a portrait of the architect Harold Desbrowe Annear, which McInnes then gave to the gallery. McInnes went on to win several more times between the wars.

The rules in plain terms

Strip away the legal language and the rules ask for a few things.

The work must be a painted portrait. Since 1922 it has had to be painted from life, which in current terms means the subject knows the artist, knows they are being painted, and has sat for the artist at least once in person. Working from photographs as well is common, but a live sitting is the minimum. The rule has teeth: in 1975 the winning portrait was disqualified after it emerged it had been painted only from a photograph.

The subject should preferably be "distinguished", which in practice is read broadly. Writers, actors, scientists, musicians, athletes, judges and fellow artists all turn up, and so do people whose distinction is local or quiet. Self-portraits are allowed, and a painter is distinguished in art by definition, which is why so many entries show artists painting other artists.

The artist must have lived in Australia or New Zealand during the eligibility period, and may enter only one work. The trustees choose the finalists from a very large number of entries, and the trustees judge the winner.

The details change from time to time, so if you are thinking of entering rather than visiting, read the current conditions on the Art Gallery of New South Wales Archibald pages rather than relying on anyone's summary, including mine.

The Wynne and the Sulman, next door

The Archibald is usually shown with two other prizes, and many regular visitors end up preferring them.

The Wynne Prize is older than the Archibald. It was set up following a bequest from Richard Wynne and first awarded in 1897, and it goes to the best landscape painting of Australian scenery or the best example of figure sculpture. It has been shown together with the Archibald since 1929. For anyone who loves landscape, the Wynne room is often where the most surprising painting in the building hangs.

The Sir John Sulman Prize joined them in 1936. It is for the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project, which in practice covers almost anything that is not a portrait or a landscape: interiors, scenes of daily life, imagined narratives, large decorative schemes. The trustees judge the Archibald and the Wynne, but the Sulman is judged each year by an invited artist, which gives it a different, sometimes more personal flavour.

Going through all three in one visit is the best way to see what is happening in Australian painting at that moment, from the most public faces to the most private rooms.

The other two prizes everyone talks about

The Packing Room Prize was first awarded in the combined 1991/92 year. It is chosen by the gallery staff who receive, unpack and handle the entries as they arrive, and it is announced before the main winner. It tends to favour bold, likeable portraits, often of well-known faces, and the announcement is a fixture in the newspapers.

The People's Choice has been running since 1988, when it went to Fred Cress for his portrait of the artist John Beard, the same painting that won the main prize. Visitors vote during the exhibition and the result is announced towards the end of the season. Knowing you can vote changes how you walk through the rooms. You start to choose.

A few winners worth knowing

The Archibald has produced far more winners than anyone can remember, but a handful of moments come up again and again.

In 1938 Nora Heysen became the first woman to win, at 28, which still makes her the youngest winner. The gallery's own timeline records it as a portrait of Madame Elink Schuurman.

The most famous row came in 1943, when William Dobell won with a portrait of his fellow artist Joshua Smith. The painting's exaggerated, elongated figure struck some people as a caricature rather than a portrait, and two other artists took the matter to court in 1944, arguing the trustees should not have given the prize to it. The court upheld the trustees' decision. The trustees' win is often told as a victory for modern painting, but the case took a heavy toll on both men, and Dobell later withdrew to Wangi Wangi on Lake Macquarie, not far from the Hunter Valley where I grew up.

In 2005 John Olsen won at 77, which the gallery's timeline records as the oldest age of any winner. The site's essay on John Olsen covers the long career that led up to it.

In 2009 the prize went to Guy Maestri for his portrait of the singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, a painting many visitors still bring up when they talk about the prize. There is more on the painter in the note on Guy Maestri.

And in 2020 Vincent Namatjira became the first Indigenous artist to win the Archibald, almost a century after the first prize.

How to visit

The exhibition runs for a few months each year and draws large crowds, so a little planning helps. Check the gallery's website for the current season's dates, opening hours and tickets well before you go, since the prize show is generally ticketed even though most of the collection is free.

Weekday mornings are quieter than weekends, and the last week of the season is often the busiest of all, as people realise they have nearly missed it. Allow about two hours if you want to see the Wynne and Sulman too, and do not try to read every label on the first lap. After the Sydney season a selection of works has often travelled to regional galleries, which can be a much calmer way to see them.

How to look at a room of portraits

A wall of faces is tiring in a way a wall of landscapes is not. Every portrait looks back at you, and after twenty of them your attention starts to slide. The trick is to slow down on purpose, as how to look at a painting slowly suggests, and to set yourself a small task.

A ten-minute exercise

Here is one I use. Walk the first room without reading anything, and stop at the portrait you would most like to have a conversation with. Then give it ten minutes, in roughly this order:

1. Two minutes from across the room. Where does the face sit in the rectangle? Is the sitter close and cropped, or small in a large space? Which way are they looking, at you or away?
2. Three minutes up close. Look at the hands, which often tell you more than the face. Look at how the paint is put on around the eyes compared with the clothes or background. Thick or thin? Fast or slow?
3. Two minutes on the setting. What objects, colours or places has the painter included, and what do they suggest about the sitter's life or work?
4. One minute on the label. Now read who it is and what the artist wrote. Does it change what you saw?
5. Two minutes back across the room. Does the painting look different now you know?

Then move on and do it again with a portrait you dislike. That second one is usually where I learn the most.

Why it still matters

Plenty of critics have grumbled about the Archibald over the decades: too many celebrities, too much size, too much scale for its own sake. Some of that is fair. But few exhibitions get so many people standing in front of paintings and arguing about them, and that seems to me exactly what J F Archibald paid for. The best way to visit is to join in: pick a favourite, cast a vote, and disagree with the judges on the train home.