Robert Hannaford, Jean Blackburn

Biography:

Robert Hannaford AM (b. 1944), a self-taught artist, grew up on his family farm near the small South Australian town of Riverton before working as political cartoonist for the Adelaide Advertiser from 1964 to 1967. In 1969 he won the inaugural AME Bale Scholarship, a highly prestigious prize, (perhaps the most esteemed in representational painting in Australia), which afforded Hannaford a traveling scholarship to study the works of the old masters abroad.

Very soon afterward, he took up painting full-time, with the encouragement of veteran South Australian portraitist, Sir Ivor Hele.

A favourite in both the Archibald Prize – in which he has been a finalist 26 times and won the People's Choice Award three times – and the Doug Moran Portrait Prize, which he won in 1990, Hannaford has enjoyed a consistent demand for official portraits.  He was commissioned to produce the official prime-ministerial portrait of Paul Keating and the official Centenary of Federation painting.

In 2016 Hannaford was the subject of a survey show at the Art Gallery of South Australia which comprised more than 200 of his works, and covered a period of approximately 50 years of practice.

The National Portrait Gallery holds his portraits of Dame Joan Sutherland, Robert Dessaix, Alexander Ramsay, Tim Flannery and Lowitja O'Donoghue, the latter painted on commission.

Artwork:

The subject artwork is a portrayal of Jean Blackburn, OAM, the first Chancellor of the University of Canberra, appointed in 1990, and a leading advocate for education in Australia.

View more portraits by Hannaford at the National Portrait Gallery, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.