Significance 2.0: a guide to assessing the significance of collections

Roslyn Russell, Kylie Winkworth

Shared collections

Painting - Portrait of Manning Clark by Arthur Boyd

Arthur Boyd
Portrait of Manning Clark 1972
Oil on canvas
Reproduced courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery

This portrait of Australian historian Manning Clark was painted by his friend, the celebrated artist Arthur Boyd, at the Clark family's holiday property at Wapengo, on the south coast of New South Wales. Clark, wearing his distinctive broad-brimmed hat, is accompanied by the family dog, Tuppence, and is pictured at a point where the scrubby coastal vegetation meets the white sand of the beach. The rendering of the landscape is inescapably reminiscent of other works by Boyd, notably the series of works he painted on the Shoalhaven River and others in his oeuvre.

During Clark's lifetime this painting hung above the dining room table at the historian's Canberra home, and still does for the six months of the year when it resides at what is now called Manning Clark House. By agreement with the National Portrait Gallery, for the other six months of the year the portrait is held by the Gallery. Over this period the portrait is replaced at Manning Clark House by a reproduction of the work. This joint management of the portrait allows it to be seen for at least half the year in the place where its significance is strongest—as part of the domestic environment inhabited by the historian and his family during his lifetime, and where he and his wife Dymphna often entertained Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne.

Managing this portrait in two locations allows it to be seen for half the year within its significant context, while permitting access by a wider public for the rest of the year.

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Significance 2.0: a guide to assessing the significance of collections

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