Bruce Armstrong Stuart Purves

Stuart Purves is an art dealer and the son of Tam and Anne Purves, proprietors of Australia’s longest established commercial gallery, the Australian Galleries. Bruce Armstrong has known him, on and off, for around 15 years.

‘I was standing in his gallery one day at an opening. I’d had my subject poached by someone else and Stuart came swirling into the room and he looked somehow important. After a few minutes it occurred to me to ask him if I could paint his portrait.

‘He was a bit reluctant at first but we had a few conversations about it and finally he agreed. We made the sittings a bit of a social event. I don’t show with him now, though I did for a while, but I’ve got to know him a lot better as a result of doing the portrait. He was a good subject. He looks cuddly, like one of the chunky animals I carve [Armstrong is also a sculptor] – or maybe he just turned out that way in my hands.’

Amstrong painted Purves in the clothes he turned up in, his coat draped over one shoulder. ‘It worked well because I wanted that big, strong, oblique shape.’

Born in Melbourne in 1957, Armstrong studied painting and then sculpture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). He has been an Archibald finalist on three previous occasions and was in the Wynne Prize in 2000.