Artist Louis Kahan AO was born in Vienna to Jewish parents. In 1947 he came to Australia, joining his family in Perth before settling in Melbourne in 1950. Soon after he arrived the editor of Meanjin, Clem Christesen, asked him to make a series of pen and ink portraits of writers for the journal. Critic Robert Nelson wrote that these portraits ‘stand tall in the great tradition of intellectual homage: direct, well observed, economical, even brusque’. Over the next 50 years such portraits were hung in many Melbourne homes. Kahan’s immediate gestural approach can be seen in this portrait of former prime minister Gough Whitlam AC QC (1916–2014), an example of the drawings Kahan made while watching television news and current affairs programs.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Mrs Lily Kahan 2017
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
© Louis Kahan/Copyright Agency, 2024
Lily Kahan (52 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Sarah Engledow on a foundational gallery figure who was quick on the draw.
1 November 2014
On the day before the Hon. E. G. Whitlam, AC, QC, died last month, at the great age of 98, there were seven former prime ministers of Australia still living, plus the incumbent Mr. Abbott – eight in all.
