National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | National Indigenous Art Triennial 07

King No Beard 2007 is a direct appropriation of the portrait of King George III painted in London in 1773 by Nathaniel Dance, which is now held in the Hermitage collection in St Petersburg. Boyd’s regal portrait of King George III in all his frills and finery is brought undone by closer observation of the stately necklace: the expected gold orbs having been replaced by skulls. The portrait also contains a self-portrait, mockingly included as a decapitated specimen in a jar, gazing mournfully heavenward like a latter-day Saint Sebastian, martyred like so many of the first Indigenous resistance fighters of Australia. Boyd’s portraits directly reference 18th-century portraits of figures associated with the earliest days of Australia’s colonisation. Within these portraits are other references, as is the case with the macabre self-portrait in which Boyd shares the fate of 18th-century Dharug/Dharuk resistance leader Pemulwuy (c. 1750–1802). Pemulwuy led uprisings against the colonisers for 12 years before finally bein