Sydney Grammar School is fortunate to have three – or more exactly four – portraits by the doyen of the genre in Australia, Robert Hannaford, who has painted Prime Ministers Hawke and Keating, Dame Joan Sutherland, Sir Donald Bradman, Tim Flannery and countless other notable individuals. In addition to these portraits, there is also a streetscape of Paddington, painted when he was staying at Vialoux Avenue over twenty years ago, which today hangs in the Dining Room at College Street.
Hannaford’s portraits at Grammar include his outstanding likenesses of Dr John Vallance (2004) and of Mr John Sheldon (2001), each representing a different aspect of his art: the official portrait of John Vallance as Headmaster, in Big School, is more formal, more highly finished, and also more consciously composed, with its quiet suggestion of thoughtfulness and interiority. In contrast, the head and shoulders study of John Sheldon, in the Master of the Lower School’s corridor, is less formal but unforgettably fresh and vivid.
After these two remarkable paintings, comparable to the best portraits in the history of Australian art, we were delighted to be able to convince Mr Hannaford to return to College Street to paint the official portrait of Dr Richard Malpass. This was admittedly not hard to achieve; he had become fond of the School during his previous stay, and in the intervening years would sometimes drop in to join an afternoon Life Drawing class. In 2016 he very kindly and without any charge to the school painted a portrait of Sarge (Mr Greg Bulger) as a demonstration of his technique, and allowed us to make a documentary video recording of the whole process. Although it was not initially conceived as a finished portrait, Mr Hannaford gave us permission to restretch this picture and frame it on the occasion of Sarge’s retirement last year.
