Marc Besen AC and Eva Besen AO Featuring a favourite painting, Fred Williams ‘Wild Dog Creek’ 1977

Marc Besen AC (1923–2023) and Eva Besen AO (1928–2021) founded the Besen Family Foundation and are among Australia's foremost philanthropists and arts benefactors. Often described as 'retail royalty', they married in Melbourne in 1950. Marc had arrived in Australia from Eastern Europe in 1947 and at the time of his marriage was working as a hosiery supplier; Eva's parents, Sam and Fay Gandel, were Polish immigrants who ran a corsetry store called Sussan. By the end of the 1950s, Marc was in business with Eva's brother John Gandel, with whom he grew Sussan into one of the country's most successful retail enterprises, along with Suzanne Grae and Sportsgirl. When the family retail empire was acquired in 2003 by the Besens' daughter, Naomi Milgrom, it was estimated to have an annual turnover of over $600 million. The Besen Family Foundation was established in 1978 and has made many hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to initiatives in the areas of health and wellbeing, education, the Jewish community, and the visual and performing arts. In 1999, Marc and Eva instigated the founding of Australia's first major privately funded public art gallery, the TarraWarra Museum of Art. Eva and Marc's four children – Naomi Milgrom, Carol Schwartz, Daniel Besen and Debbie Dadon – continue the family tradition of philanthropic work.

In this portrait by Raelene Sharp, Marc and Eva Besen are depicted at home with one of Marc's favourite paintings – a landscape by Fred Williams. Acknowledging the Besens' lifelong support of artists, Sharp noted: 'Some of the Williams painting overlaps their figures as the landscape becomes part of them and they part of the landscape. Hence, they are literally and figuratively part of the Australian landscape of art.'

Commissioned with funds provided by Nigel Satterley AM and Denise Satterley 2020
© Raelene Sharp