Bernard Hall, The artist in the studio, 1924, oil on canvas, private collection, Melbourne.
Bernard Hall was master of the School of Painting between 1892 and 1935. This is one of four studio ‘portraits’ painted by Bernard Hall in the 1920s in the Little Lonsdale Street wing of the art gallery. Septimus Power (1877–1951), who had just completed the mural War at the top of the Library staircase, smokes nonchalantly on a sofa beneath the windows.