My dear friend, the great Australian painter John Olsen was, at 77, the oldest artist to win the Archibald Prize.

In 2019, over a long lunch at Catalina restaurant in Rose Bay facing the Sydney Harbour, I was with John and Barry Humphries when they yarned about what might happen to John’s 2005 Archibald Prize winning Self Portrait Janus- faced.

As Barry and I were then fifty years sober, it will come as no surprise that it was John who did all the drinking!

That afternoon, in his favourite eatery, John drank moderately. The Moderation, he was delighted to tell us, is the name of a pub in Reading, at which he once drank when he was in England.

John and Barry thought that after he died, it might be a good idea that his most famous painting should somehow be made available to the nation.

It is pleasing to report that, a little over a year after John’s death at age 95, his daughter Louise, who is a renowned designer and painter, and his son Tim Olsen, who runs a leading Sydney art gallery, have gifted Self portrait Janus- faced to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Tim &........

© Pearls and Irritations