Portrait Detective

Do you have treasured family photos whose date your do not know?  Portrait Detective is a unique image-dating tool developed by Inside History and the State Library of New South Wales to help you accurately interpret and decode historic images, dating your photos and helping you solve the mystery of who they feature.

Drawing on the research of historian and portrait-dating expert Margot Riley, Portrait Detective brings together a selection of 100 images of Australian people sourced from the Library’s collections, dating from 1788 to 1955.  They cover a range of media such as oil paintings, water colours, drawings, miniatures, silhouettes, engravings and photographs, and all depict Australians from a variety of eras, classes, social contexts and walks of life.

Each image in the timeline has been chosen because its date and provenance is known, so you can see at a glance the changing styles of portraiture, art, dress and personal grooming over time.
Arranged in a chronological timeline, these images form an authoritative and historically accurate record and reference resource of the changing appearance of men, women and children in New South Wales over time.  As you browse through the timeline you can click on an individual image to learn more about:

• the subject
• the artist or photographer who created it
• the provenance
• the medium
• background details, and more.

There is also the Men's Style Guide and Women's Style Guide which explores changes in fashion and grooming through time.  The men's style guide explores coats, shirts, neckties, trousers, and hair and beard styles.  The women's style guide explores the bodice, neckline, sleeves, accessories and hair.

Using Margot’s expertise in dress and photographic history to decode the visual evidence in every image, Portrait Detective will equip you with specialised visual analysis skills to accurately interpret and date historical images of your own.