© National Portrait Gallery 2025
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
Madame Praeger
Biography
Laura Praeger (née Blundell) was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and was about twelve years old when her father brought his family to Australia, settling in Queensland.
1 portrait in the collection
Jane Windeyer, n.d.
Madame Praeger
Portrait, carte de visite photograph
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the Windeyer family 2012
Madame Marie Carandini
Biography
Marie Carandini (née Burgess, 1826–1894), aka 'Madame Carandini', was seven years old when her family arrived in Van Diemen's Land as assisted immigrants.
1 portrait in the collection
Madame Sibly, Phrenologist and Mesmerist, c. 1870
James E. Bray
Portrait, albumen silver carte de visite photograph
Purchased 2017
Sibly irresistible
Magazine article by Alexandra Roginski, 2019
Alexandra Roginski reveals a forceful feminist figure in the colonial period’s slippery science, phrenology.
Madame Carandini, c. 1872
Charles Hewitt, A Marion Son and Co (Paris/London)
Portrait, albumen silver photograph on cabinet card
Purchased 2022
Madame Melba, 1922
Harold Cazneaux
Portrait, gelatin silver photograph on paper
Purchased 2015
Portrait 61
Summer 2018/19
Magazine
Max Dupain's unknown portrait subjects, phrenologist Madame Sibly, Indigenous-European relationships, Thomas Gainsborough and more.
Fame or celebrity?
About Face article
A question lately cropped up in connection with Madame Melba as to whether fame and celebrity are not essentially the same thing. My feeling is that they are different.
The Waxworks
General content
Waxworks were among the various types of entertainment venue to emerge in Australian cities in the mid-nineteenth century.
Ada Jemima Crossley
Biography
Ada Jemima Crossley (1874–1929), singer, was one of several Australian-born divas to achieve an international reputation in the late nineteenth century.
2 portraits in the collection
Anna May Wong
Dorothy Wilding
Image
Portrait of Florence Broadhurst, 1968
Joshua Smith
Portrait, oil on canvas
Purchased 2007
Louis Antoine de Bougainville
Biography
Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1729–1811), explorer, was an outstanding soldier, sailor and navigator who was gifted, too, in many intellectual spheres.
2 portraits in the collection
Amy Castles
Biography
Amy Castles (1880–1951), soprano, was born in Melbourne and educated at schools in Bendigo, where her family lived from the early 1880s.
4 portraits in the collection
Amy Castles, c. 1899
Falk Studios
Portrait, albumen silver photograph on cardboard (Paris Panel)
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by Jim and Barbara Higgins 2012