Ernest Buckmaster grew up in country Victoria, where his facility for art was recognised early on. As a student under Bernard Hall and WB McInnes at the NGV school from 1918 to 1924, he won many prizes. From this period on, his landscapes and flower pieces sold well, particularly in Victoria and South Australia, and from the time of his first Sydney exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries in 1927 he was commissioned as a portraitist. With a remarkable 72 portraits hung in the Archibald Prize between 1924 and 1966, he won the Prize in 1932 with a portrait of Sir William Irvine. At the end of the second world war he was sent as an official war artist to document the Japanese surrender; he missed the ceremony, but still completed 51 works for the War Memorial. Over the course of his career he made many articulate attacks on modern art.
