Archibald Prize: No Award!

In 1964 the prize money for the Archibald Prize for portraiture painting was £900, but the coveted prize was dramatically not awarded that year. It was the 44th year of the prize and the first time the finalists failed to impress the judge trustees. In this newsreel, paintings by Judy Cassab and Frank Conner are singled out as well as Joshua Smith’s painting of laconic Australian actor Chips Rafferty.

Smith’s portrait presents Chips as an Aussie bushman – an archetype he had previously embodied in his roles in films such as Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940) and The Overlanders (1946). Chips wears an Akubra hat, leather vest, chequered shirt and neck scarf, a stock whip is thrown over his shoulder and a cigarette burns in his hand.

Notes by Tara Marynowsky