Judy Cassab
Judy Cassab AO CBE (1920-2015), artist, was one of Australia's most prolific, most popular and best-known portraitists. Cassab emigrated to Australia in 1951, having studied art in Prague and her native Hungary. Within months of arriving in Sydney, she was commissioned by Sir Charles Lloyd Jones to paint a portrait of his wife, becoming an Archibald finalist for the first time the same year. In 1953, she held her first Australian solo exhibition at Sydney's Macquarie Galleries; subsequently, she exhibited regularly in Australia and overseas. The winner of the Women's Weekly Portrait Prize in 1955 and 1956, by the mid-1960s she was sought-after as a portraitist, completing commissions for high-profile clients such as Princess Alexandra and Queen Sirikit of Thailand. In 1960, she won the Archibald Prize for her portrait of her friend, Stan Rapotec; in 1967, she won it again with her painting of artist Margo Lewers. In all, Cassab had 40 paintings exhibited in the Archibald Prize; and through her many other portraits - both formal commissions and portrayals of family and friends - created a distinct record of Australian society from the 1950s to the present. Her many awards include an honorary doctorate from the University of Sydney and the 1996 Nita B Kibble Literary Award for her published diaries. The National Portrait Gallery currently has sixteen of her portraits.
Updated 2019
18 portraits in the collection
3 portraits donated to the collection
1 NPPP photo
by Judy Cassab
frame: 60.0 x 53.0 cm
support: 42.5 x 37.0 cm
Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Gift of Dr Phillip Dutton and Valerie Dutton 2013 Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
by Greg Weight
gelatin silver photograph
sheet: 40.4 x 50.4 cm
image: 29.1 x 43.0 cm
Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Gift of Patrick Corrigan AM 2004 Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
by Andrew Sibley
Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2010
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Judy, 2012
by Sally Robinson
National Photographic Portrait Prize finalist
Magazine article, Portrait 60
Flesh, figure and rock
Aimee Board traces Judy Cassab's path to the Australian outback, arriving at the junction of inspiration and abstraction.
Vintage Cassab
The oil portrait of Sir Frank Packer KBE by Judy Cassab was gifted to the National Portrait Gallery in 2006.
Dr Stella Cornelius AO OBE
Marea Gazzard
Paul Haefliger
Mervyn Horton
Neville Jeffress AM
Mungo Ballardie MacCullum
Donald G. Mackay AO
George Molnar AO OBE
Lewis Morley
Dr Brenda Niall AO
Sir Frank Packer
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The artist's diary
Previous exhibition, 2013 – 2014
The artist's diary profiles six decades of Cassab's work, from the early portrait commissions of the 1950s to later paintings that have helped confirm her eminent place in the canon of Australian portraiture.
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Records held at the National Library