The Victorian Bar's Art and Collections committee oversees the commission of portraits of the Bar's illuminaries past and present as well as the maintenance, cataloguing and display of the Bar's art collection and artefacts. The Bar's portrait collection is located in the Peter O'Callaghan QC Gallery in the foyer of the Owen Dixon Chambers East and West.
The Honourable Sir Leo Cussen
(1859 - 1933)
Leo Finn Bernard Cussen was born at Portland Victoria in 1859 and died in 1933. He graduated from law school in 1887 with a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts. He was called to the Victorian Bar in 1886. While a barrister he played for the Bar Cricket XI and from 1907 until his death he was the President of the Melbourne Cricket Club.
He was appointed to the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1906. In 1922 he received a Knighthood for invaluable service to his country. Sir Leo Cussen died in 1933.
He was deeply respected by other members of the judiciary and in 1972 the Leo Cussen Institute now known as the Leo Cussen Centre of Law was, at the wish of the profession, named after him.
Artist – John Longstaff
John Campbell Longstaff (1861-1941) was born in Clunes, Victoria, the son of a store keeper. In 1882, he began his art studies at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. He was the winner of the National Gallery’s first travelling scholarship in 1887, which facilitated studies in Paris, London and Spain. He returned to Australia in 1895 and established a portraiture practice in Melbourne, but returned to England in 1901.
In 1918-1919, Longstaff served with the Australian Imperial Force as an official war artist. He returned to live in Melbourne permanently in 1920.
John Longstaff won the Archibald Prize five times during the 1920s and 1930s. The Victorian Bar’s portrait of Sir Leo Cussen, attributed to Longstaff, was painted around that time.
The Honourable Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs KCMG GCMG GCB KC
(1855-1948)
Isaac Isaacs was born 6 August 1855. He attained his law degree from the University of Melbourne where he graduated with Honours in 1880. Isaacs worked full time at the Prothonotary’s Office while studying law at the University of Melbourne. He joined the Bar in 1882. In 1892 he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as a Liberal member for Bogong, a seat which he held until 1901. From 1894 to 1899, Sir Isaac was the Victorian Attorney-General. Issacs was elected to the convention that drafted the Australian Constitution. Isaacs took Silk in 1899.
In 1901 he was the acting Premier; he was encouraged to stay in that role permanently. He declined to do so, however, and was then elected in 1901 to the first Federal Parliament to represent the Federal Victorian seat of Indi in north-east Victoria.
In 1906, Sir Isaac was appointed to the High Court of Australia and in 1930, at the age of 75, Isaacs was the third Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. Shortly after that appointment, King George V, on the advice of Prime Minister Scullin, appointed Isaacs as Governor General. Isaacs was the first Governor General to live permanently at Government House Canberra.
Artist – Percy White
Percy White, born Peretz Witofski in July 1885, attended the Vilnius Art School in Lithuania where one of his fellow students was Marc Chagall. His teachers and mentors included Adolf von Menzel and Professor Liebermann. He worked in Leningrad, Berlin and Paris and then in London for many years, before emigrating with his family to Australia in 1926. In London he exhibited with the sculptor Jacob Epstein. In Melbourne in 1963 his entry in the third annual exhibition of members of the Jewish Society of Arts was awarded the ‘best overall exhibit’ and his oil painting ‘Indian Shepherd’ was nominated for the B’Nai Brith Interstate and New Zealand Travelling Exhibition. He exhibited in the 1964 and 1965 annual exhibitions at the Toorak Gallery and in the Young Lions Second Annual Jewish Art Exhibition at the Argus Gallery in c. 1980. Mr White was the first official patron of the Melbourne-based Bezalel Fellowship of Arts in 1965, and was regarded as the dean of Jewish artists in Australia.
Percy White was the grandfather of Jeffery Sher QC (Bar Roll no. 624). He painted the Bar’s portrait of Sir Isaac Isaacs at his grandson’s request when Sher first came to the Bar in 1961. It is a copy of a three-quarter length portrait, which White had painted in 1930. Sher generously donated his portrait to the Victorian Bar in the late 1970s and for many years it hung in the Bar Chairman’s office.
The Right Honourable Sir John Latham PC GCMG CMG KC (1877 - 1964)
The Right Honourable Sir John Greig Latham was a politician, diplomat, ambassador, Lieutenant Commander and Chief Justice. He received a scholarship to Scotch College and progressed thereafter to gain degrees in Arts and Law at the University of Melbourne. He was called to the Victorian Bar in 1904 and became a King’s Counsel (KC) in 1922. He was Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia from October 1935 until April 1952.
During World War I, he served as Lieutenant Commander in naval intelligence and was an Australian advisor at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 for which he was awarded Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG). He served as Australia’s first ambassador to Japan in 1940-41 during World War II while still Chief Justice. Latham was also a member of the House of Representatives from 1922 until 1934. He held the positions of Attorney General from 1925 until 1929 and then from 1932 to 1934. He was Minister for Industry from 1928 to 1929, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for External Affairs from 1932 until 1934, and Leader of the Opposition from 1920 to 1931. Later, in 1933, Sir John Greig Latham became President of the first Australian Legal Convention. He was appointed Chancellor of the University of Melbourne from 1939 until 1941. He was appointed a Privy Counsellor (PC) in 1933.Artist – Charles Bush
(1919 – 1989)
Bush was born in Brunswick East. At the age of 14 he gained admission to the National Gallery School where he studied under Wheeler and McInnes. He later taught at the school and in the 1960s, with others, established the Leveson Street Gallery which became a place for young artists to exhibit. During his lifetime he won several Crouch and Wynne prizes. He was appointed an official war artist in 1943.
The Honourable Sir Charles John Lowe KCMG
(1880-1969)
Sir Charles John Lowe was admitted to the Victorian Bar in 1905, having studied Arts and Law at the University of Melbourne. Lowe quickly became a leader of the Bar.
Sir Charles was elevated to the Supreme Court bench on 28 January 1927, where he served for 37 years. In the same year, he joined the Council of the University of Melbourne, later becoming Chancellor from 1941 to 1954. Lowe also served as a council member of Trinity College from 1927 to 1935.
Known as a judge who applied the law meticulously, Sir Charles acted three times as Chief Justice. Lowe retired from the Court in December 1962 at the age of 82. Sir Charles was knighted in 1948. In 1956 he was appointed KCMG.
Lowe presided over several commissions of inquiry – three for the Commonwealth and one for the State. One of those inquiries required him to inquire into all the circumstances of the Japanese air raids on Darwin in 1942. In 1949-50 he investigated the activities of the Communist Party in Victoria.
Artist – Judy Cassab AO CBE
Judy Cassab was born in 1920 in Vienna, Austria, to Jewish-Hungarian parents. She was raised by her mother and grandmother in Hungary and studied art at the Budapest Academy. She survived the Holocaust by assuming her maid’s identity.
Judy Cassab migrated to Australia with her husband and two young sons in 1950 and settled in Sydney. She has had a very successful career as an artist exhibiting in Australia and overseas and won the Archibald Prize twice (1960 and 1967). She is the recipient of official Honours in “recognition of service to the visual arts”.
The Victorian Bar’s portrait of Sir Arthur Lowe by Judy Cassab was painted in 1966.
The Honourable Sir Owen Dixon GCMG S.C.
(1886 - 1971)
Sir Owen Dixon was born in 1886 and completed his schooling at Hawthorn College. He studied law, classical languages and literature at the University of Melbourne, taking a BA in 1906, an LLB in 1908, and an MA in 1909. Sir Owen completed articles with Crisp & Cameron. He signed the roll of counsel of the Victorian Bar on 1 March 1910 and was appointed Kings Counsel in 1922.
Sir Owen declined several judicial posts before accepting appointment as Justice of the High Court of Australia in 1942. In the same year, he was appointed Australian Minister to Washington, and took leave of his judicial post to fulfil his role of ensuring that Australian interests were not overlooked during the war. He returned to his judicial position in 1944.
In 1952, Sir Owen was appointed Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, a position he held for twelve years. On his appointment as Chief Justice, Sir Owen said:
“For my part, I have never wavered in the view that the honourable practice of the profession of advocacy affords the greatest opportunity of contributing to the administering of justice according to the law.”
Sir Owen resigned from the High Court in 1964, and died in 1971. During his time on the Bench, he was widely acknowledged as one of the most eminent judicial lawyers in the English speaking world. He continues to be regarded as one of the greatest jurists in the history of the common law.
Archibald Colquhoun (Artist)
Archibald Colquhoun (1894-1983) was born in Heidelberg, Melbourne; the son of artists. He attended the National Gallery School, where he studied under Frederick McCubbin. He later studied under Max Meldrum.
Colquhoun toured Europe during the 1920s, returning to Melbourne in 1926 to set up a studio and art school in Collins Street. His students included William Dargie (whose portraits of Sir Henry Winneke and Richard McGarvie are also in the Victorian Bar Collection).
The Honourable Sir Frank Gavan Duffy
Born in Dublin, Sir Frank Gavan Duffy studied arts and law at the University of Melbourne. He joined the Victorian Bar and took silk in 1901. A renowned advocate, Sir Owen Dixon said that Duffy “could make bricks without straw in open court”. He contributed to the legal profession in various ways, lecturing at the university and publishing legal texts.
Duffy was appointed to the High Court of Australia in 1913. He is said to have displayed a States-rights approach to the Constitution, dissenting in the seminal Engineers’ case of 1920. He was appointed Chief Justice of the High Court in 1931. Another portrait of Duffy by William McInnes can be found at the High Court in Canberra.
Artist - Percy White
Percy White, born Peretz Witofski in July 1885, attended the Vilnius Art School in Lithuania where one of his fellow students was Marc Chagall. His teachers and mentors included Adolf von Menzel and Professor Liebermann. He worked in Leningrad, Berlin and Paris and then in London for many years, before emigrating with his family to Australia in 1926. In London he exhibited with the sculptor Jacob Epstein. In Melbourne in 1963 his entry in the third annual exhibition of members of the Jewish Society of Arts was awarded the ‘best overall exhibit’ and his oil painting ‘Indian Shepherd’ was nominated for the B’Nai Brith Interstate and New Zealand Travelling Exhibition. He exhibited in the 1964 and 1965 annual exhibitions at the Toorak Gallery and in the Young Lions Second Annual Jewish Art Exhibition at the Argus Gallery in c. 1980. Mr White was the first official patron of the Melbourne-based Bezalel Fellowship of Arts in 1965, and was regarded as the dean of Jewish artists in Australia.
Percy White was the grandfather of Jeffery Sher QC (Bar Roll no. 624).
The Right Honourable Sir Robert Gordon Menzies KT QC
(1894-1978)
Sir Robert Menzies was born in Jeparit, in the Wimmera district, in 1894. He was the fourth of five children. His father, James was a storekeeper and a lay preacher, who later served as the Member for Lowan in the Victorian Parliament (1911-1920). Sir Robert’s early education began in Ballarat and was completed at Wesley College, Melbourne on a scholarship.
Sir Robert obtained his LLB from the University of Melbourne in 1916 (LLM 1918); again on a scholarship. He was admitted to the Bar in May 1918 and read with Sir Owen Dixon. Within two years he had appeared in the High Court of Australia, in the landmark Engineers Case (for the Amalgamated Society of Engineers).
Sir Robert entered State politics in 1928 and for some years worked concurrently as a barrister and an MP. He took silk in 1929. In 1934, he moved full time into politics, standing for the Federal Seat of Kooyong. In that year, he was appointed Attorney General in the government of Joseph Lyons’ United Australia Party. Sir Robert first became Prime Minister in 1939 following Lyons’ death. He served two terms 1939-1941 and 1949-1966.
In his careers in both law and politics, Sir Robert is remembered for being superbly erudite and having a ready wit. In retirement, he was Chancellor of the University of Melbourne from 1967-1972 and also wrote two volumes of reminiscences Afternoon Light (1967) and The Measure of the Years (1970). He suffered a stroke in 1971 and died at home in Malvern, Melbourne in 1978.
The Victorian Bar’s portrait of Sir Robert Menzies was commissioned by the Bar from Sir Ivor Hele in 1966. An earlier portrait of Sir Robert by Hele won the 1954 Archibald Prize.
Sir Ivor Hele (ARTIST)
(1912-1993)
Ivor Hele was born in Edwardstown, South Australia in 1912. At age 16, he left Australia for Europe to study drawing and painting in Paris and Munich.
Hele was appointed as an Australian war artist during the Second World War and the Korean War.
He won the Archibald Prize five times, including in 1954 for a portrait of Sir Robert Menzies.
The Victorian Bar’s portrait of Sir Robert Menzies was commissioned by the Bar in 1966.
The Honourable Sir Arthur Dean
(1893 - 1970)
The son of a country school teacher, he was born in Merino. He attended Scotch College from 1907 and won an exhibition to Melbourne University in 1910, graduating LLB in 1915. He then enlisted and served on the Western Front in the 7th Battalion at Pozieres. He was commissioned in September 1916 and wounded at Passchendaele. When he returned to the Front, he was gassed in December 1917 before returning to Melbourne in 1919. He published trench poetry in army magazines and later co-wrote a history of the 7th Battalion. He was admitted in 1919, took silk in 1944, and was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1949. He mostly heard equity and commercial cases but presided over the controversial Tait murder trial. He lectured in Equity at Melbourne University and was Chancellor from 1954 to 1966. He wrote a history of the Victorian Bar in 1968, entitled 'A Multitude of Counsellors'.
Artist – Paul Fitzgerald AM
(1922 - 2017)
Born in 1922 in Hawthorn, Victoria, Paul Fitzgerald studied at the National Gallery School in the periods 1940-43 and 1946-47. His studies were interrupted for service in the Army during World War II.
Fitzgerald was a finalist for the Archibald on many occasions with portraits of Justice Monahan, Sir Reg Ansett, Sir Henry Bolte and Sir Robert Menzies.
Fitzgerald founded the Australian Guild of Realist Artists.
Sir Norman O’Bryan KC KBE
(1894-1968)
Sir Norman O’Bryan was born in South Melbourne in 1894. He was the son of a bank manager and the youngest of six children. His early schooling was at the local parish school, St Peter and Paul’s and then at St Patrick’s College, East Melbourne and Christian Brothers College, Victoria Parade, from which he matriculated as dux.
Sir Norman obtained his LLB from Melbourne University in 1915 and was the Supreme Court Prize winner for that year. He served Articles with the firm of Plante & Henry and was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in Victoria on 1 August 1916.
Sir Norman served with the Australian Imperial Force’s artillery division in France from April 1918 and rose to the rank of Lieutenant. He was wounded in September 1918. He then spent some months in chambers at Middle Temple, London, before returning to Melbourne. He was discharged on Christmas Day 1919.
Sir Norman was called to the Victorian Bar on 20 February 1920. His practise was successful and varied and included trials, royal commissions and appeals. Sir Norman also lectured at the University of Melbourne from 1929 to 1932, in private international law. He took silk in 1937. In 1939, he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Victoria.
During World War II, Sir Norman acted as legal adviser to the Minister for the Army and as an Official Visitor to internment camps in Victoria. He was knighted in 1958.
Sir Norman retired in 1966, after 28 years on the Bench. In an interview with The Age newspaper upon retirement, Sir Norman referred to the practise “increasing amongst barristers” where, at the end of cross-examination, the barrister asks all and sundry about him if there are any further questions which should be asked. Sir Norman waxed dryly, “I have always felt tempted to ask: ‘Well do you really think such indecision is worth the 75 guineas marked on your brief?’”. Times haven’t changed, only the fees.
Sir Norman died at home on 5 June 1968.
The portrait of Sir Norman O’Bryan is one of a series of portraits of judges of the Supreme Court of Victoria painted by Paul Fitzgerald in the 1950s and 1960s.
Artist – Paul Fitzgerald AM
(1922 - 2017)
Born in 1922 in Hawthorn, Victoria, Paul Fitzgerald studied at the National Gallery School in the periods 1940-43 and 1946-47. His studies were interrupted for service in the Army during World War II.
Fitzgerald was a finalist for the Archibald on many occasions with portraits of Justice Monahan, Sir Reg Ansett, Sir Henry Bolte and Sir Robert Menzies.
Fitzgerald founded the Australian Guild of Realist Artists.