Sir Charles Court and Richard Court

Sir Charles Court AK KCMG OBE (1911–2007) was 25th premier of Western Australia, from 1974 to 1982. Sir Charles began his career as an accountant in 1933, and fifty years later he was named Australian Chartered Accountant of the Year. The Liberal member for Nedlands from 1953 until he retired from Parliament in 1982, he was West Australian minister for industrial development and the northwest from 1959 to 1971. The prime minister stated in 2006 that ‘no figure in public life has done more to promote resource development in this state, and therefore Australia, than Sir Charles Court.’ Richard Court AC (b. 1947), one of his five sons, succeeded Charles Court as the member for Nedlands in 1982, holding the seat until he resigned in 2001. During this period, from 1993 to 2001, he was 30th premier of Western Australia, and is widely credited with restoring stability to the state after the ‘WA Inc’ royal commission into commercial activities of the state government.

Mary Moore (b. 1957) began formal art training in Claremont at the age of 15, holding her first solo show two years later. She later studied at the Royal College of Art, London, and gained an Australia Council award that enabled her to paint in Italy. In 2001 she won the Portia Geach Prize for an uncompromising self-portrait. The National Portrait Gallery commissioned her portrait of the late West Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley in 2003. Moore portrayed the Courts in the Speaker's Corridor of the West Australian Parliament.

Commissioned with funds provided by Tim Fairfax AC 2006
© Mary Moore