The brown suits of the Archibald Prize are gone. Here’s what’s replaced them

Casting her eye over the 59 finalists in this year’s Archibald Prize, curator Beatrice Gralton notes the conspicuous absence of “men in brown suits”.

Aside from Sean Layh’s dramatic Packing Room Prize winner – a Shakespearean double-portrait of actor Jacob Collins as a tormented Hamlet – the sitters are defined by splashes of colour and a defiance of genre, with some even forgoing an old-fashioned picture frame.

The cohort ranges from the modern immediacy of Andy Collis’ portrait of family friend Sophia Begg (aka social media influencer Sopha Dopha), captured on a handmade, painted, resin-coated iPhone, to Guy McEwan’s portrait of Wayside Chapel’s Reverend Jon Owen, revealed figuratively and literally in the style of a Middle Ages epistle, using Gothic font, modern vellum, and Japanese Gansai watercolours.

“If you look at what the Archibald was 60 years ago, you would have seen men in brown suits,” Gralton says. “Now we see a real ‘change in the guard’ regarding representation and who is being depicted in these portraits.”

The vibrancy of 2026 stands in stark relief to the inaugural 1921 winner, Melbourne artist W.B. McInnes, who won for a sober portrait of architect Harold Desbrowe-Annear, sitting stiffly beside a table of architectural drawings and objets d’art.

McInnes dominated the first decade, winning four times with portraits that epitomised pinnacle respectability: lawyers, generals and bewigged judges. It wasn’t until just past the peak of the Great Depression in 1934 that the trustees awarded the first self-portrait.

Last year’s Archibald Prize entries leaned into sadness, joy and the everyday. This year, Gralton observes an uptick in stage, screen and advocates, with “artists using the platform they have through another profession”.

Gralton found this year’s cohort, while not without humour, more earnest and pensive. Juan Ford painted disability rights campaigner Chloé Hayden, while Stephanie Galloway Brown painted seven-time world champion surfer Layne Beachley.

National Art School head of undergraduate studies Dr Lorraine Kypiotis says that good portraiture should tell us fundamental truths about humanity and identity.

“Really good portraits allow us to gain insights into the social, cultural and political mores of our own time,” she says. “It offers an opportunity to connect with individuals and, in the best cases, reveals something of their inner selves.”

Kypiotis regards Tsering Hannaford’s portrait of artist Loribelle Spirovski as an excellent example.

“To choose to paint Spirovski, an artist in her own right, in the pose of Albrecht Dürer in his famous self-portrait of 1500 speaks volumes about her placement in the pantheon of notable artists,” she says.

“It’s not gimmicky, it’s not kitsch – it’s a solid work that reflects the painter’s artistic engagement with the sitter. The image of Spirovski is, to use the words of Vasari when he was describing the Mona Lisa, ‘as alive as the original’.”

Associate Professor Peter Edwell, whose book The Case that Stopped a Nation details the 1944 scandal over whether William Dobell’s win was a caricature or a portrait, notes that, while the Archibald has moved far beyond “stuffy boardroom art”, the public and the packing room still favour high realism.

Edwell, Macquarie University’s director of the Australian Centre for Ancient Numismatic Studies, points to the gritty portrait of artist Christophe Domergue titled A-peeling to the gods, the largest of this year’s finalists. Domergue is painted from above at a moment when the “artist looks for inspiration and validation in the midst of the long hours and dedication that urban – and all – art requires”.

Archibald’s will stipulated that the subject of the portrait should preferentially be a person distinguished in arts, letters, science or politics, and that the portrait be painted from life.

“Because participation in all of those areas tended to be dominated by men from the 1920s to the 1970s, men were more often the subjects,” Edwell says.

“One of the reasons so many of the Archibald entries over the years have been of fellow artists or self-portraits is that they clearly qualify under the ‘arts’ category. When subjects during those years were females, they were often artists.”

Female and male artists and subjects are split equally across this year’s Archibald, Wynne, and Sulman finalists. Art Gallery of NSW director Maud Page chose not to highlight the moment at the Packing Room Prize announcement. “I don’t want to keep drawing attention to it because that’s how it should be,” she says.

She is struck by three matriarchs as subjects: My Brilliant Career producer Margaret Fink, artist Elisabeth Cummings and Anangu artist Iluwanti Ken.

Ultimately, Gralton views the Archibald as a “noisy, slightly chaotic” gathering. “Artists are the people who use chaos as a space for creativity and distil it,” she says.

“It’s a superpower, and that’s what they do so well.”

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