Harold Holt CH was Australia’s 17th prime minister, from January 1966 to December 1967, when he disappeared off the coast of Victoria. John McEwen GCMG CH was caretaker prime minister until 10 January 1968.
Louis Kahan (1905-2002) was born in Vienna, Austria to Jewish parents. After training as a tailor in Vienna, at twenty Kahan moved to Paris, where he worked for the couturier Paul Poiret, first as a tailor and then a designer. In 1939, he enlisted in the Foreign Legion; with the American Red Cross in North Africa, he made thousands of rather glamorous portraits of wounded servicemen. In Paris again, he was an illustrator for Le Figaro, but in 1947 he came to Australia, settling in Melbourne. Soon after, the editor of Meanjin asked him to make a series of pen and ink portraits of writers for the journal. Over the next fifty years his portrait drawings were hung in many Melbourne homes. He won the Archibald Prize in 1962 with a startling painting of Patrick White. Melbourne’s Jewish Museum held a multifarious Kahan retrospective in 1997.
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.
Seventeen of Australia’s thirty prime ministers to date are represented in the contrasting sizes, moods and mediums of these portraits.
