The prize has attracted a good deal of controversy and several court cases. The most famous was in 1943, when
William Dobell's winning painting,
Mr Joshua Smith, a portrait of fellow artist
Joshua Smith, was challenged because of claims it was a caricature rather than a portrait.
Max Meldrum criticised the 1938 Archibald Prize winner,
Nora Heysen, saying that women could not be expected to paint as well as men. Heysen was the first woman to win the Archibald Prize, with a portrait of Madame Elink Schuurman, the wife of the Consul General for the Netherlands. In 1953, several art students, including
John Olsen, protested against William Dargie's winning portrait, the seventh time he had been awarded the prize. One protester tied a sign around her dog which said "Winner Archibald Prize – William Doggie". Dargie went on to win the prize again in 1956. On becoming prime minister in 1972,
Gough Whitlam commissioned his friend
Clifton Pugh to paint the official portrait. Normally the Australian Parliament Historical Memorial Committee would have commissioned a portrait. Pugh's portrait of Whitlam won the 1972 Archibald Prize. In 1975, John Bloomfield's portrait of
Tim Burstall was disqualified on the grounds that it had been painted from a blown up photograph, rather than from life. The prize was then awarded to
Kevin Connor. In 1983, John Bloomfield sued for the return of the 1975 prize which was unsuccessful. As a result of the controversy, the application form for the Archibald Prize was modified to make it clear that the subject must be painted from life. In 1985, administration of the trust was transferred to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, after a court case where the
Perpetual Trustee Company took the Australian Journalists Association Benevolent Fund to court. In 1997, the painting by
Evert Ploeg of the
Bananas in Pyjamas television characters was deemed ineligible by the trustees because it was not a painting of a person. Another controversy involved the 2000 Archibald winner, when artist
Adam Cullen lodged a complaint with the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, that it had used his painting,
Portrait of David Wenham, in a television commercial. In 2002, head packer Steve Peters singled out a painting of himself by Dave Machin as a possible winner for the
Packing Room Prize. It did not win, but it was hung outside the Archibald exhibition. Following that, portraits of the head packer were no longer allowed. In 2004,
Craig Ruddy's image of
David Gulpilil, which won both the main prize and the "People's Choice" award, was challenged on the basis that it was a charcoal sketch rather than a painting. The claim was dismissed in the
Supreme Court of New South Wales in June 2006. In 2008,
Sam Leach's image of himself in a
Nazi uniform made the front page of Melbourne's newspaper
The Age and sparked a national debate about the appropriateness of his choice of subject matter. The prize money was also changed to $50,000. It was changed twice more, and is worth $100,000. and for the first time an Indigenous painter (
Vincent Namatjira) won the prize. == References ==