CANBERRA.- The Chairman, Board, Director and Staff of the National Portrait Gallery mourn the loss of one of their most generous benefactors, Robert Oatley AO, who passed away on Sunday 10 January 2016, aged 87.

In 2000 the opportunity arose for the National Portrait Gallery to purchase a work that was in every sense a ‘foundation portrait’ for the young institution: John Webber’s Captain James Cook RN 1782, which was the only major portrait of the great eighteenth-century navigator remaining in private hands. Robert Oatley enthusiastically contributed funds that enabled the work to be secured for the national collection.

One of Australia’s most successful wine industry figures, Oatley’s Rosemount Estate in the Hunter Valley produced its first vintage in 1974 and over the ensuing decades he built Rosemount into Australia’s largest family-owned wine producer. Following Rosemount’s merger with Southcorp Wines in 2001, and its subsequent sale, the Oatley family re-entered the wine business in 2006 with the establishment of Oatley Wines, now a generous sponsor of National Portrait Gallery events.

A keen sailor himself and owner of the record-breaking Sydney-Hobart winning yacht Wild Oats, in 2007 Oatley built on his contribution to the repatriation of the key portrait of Cook by funding the acquisition of a number of significant items relating to Cook’s voyages for the collection. The portrait of Cook by Webber remains an icon of the collection and forms the centrepiece of displays in the permanent gallery named in Robert Oatley’s honour.