Bryan Westwood The Prime Minister

This portrait of politician Paul Keating (born 1944) by Bryan Westwood is now in the Museum of Australian Democracy Collection, Canberra.

Keating was not yet prime minister of Australia when he first sat for the portrait – painted over five sittings – although the leadership of the Australian Labor Party was in contention. By the time of the Archibald exhibition, he had just seized the leadership from Bob Hawke – the first time an incumbent prime minister was removed from office by his party.

Keating said of Westwood, whom he’d known since 1987: ‘A measure of his standing was that he was a painter in the classical tradition, but whose work was relevant in the ambience of contemporary Australian art. He made it easier for other artists to develop that vernacular.’

In the 1960s, following a career in advertising, economics and film, Westwood began painting professionally, after encouragement from artists Jeffrey Smart and Justin O’Brien. Largely self-taught, he won the Archibald twice: in 1989 with a portrait of artist Elwyn Lynn, and with this painting of Keating.