Marcus Beilby (born 1951), Opening of Parliament House by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on 9 May 1988, 1994, Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection.

Marcus Beilby immortalised the opening ceremony of the new and permanent Parliament House in a painting commissioned by the Historical Memorials Collection. Opening of Parliament House by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on 9 May 1988 presents the official opening ceremony address by her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the Great Hall, and guests in attendance.

Charles Bush was originally commissioned to complete the painting for the opening; however, he died in 1989 before he could finish his work. In 1992, Western Australian artist Marcus Beilby was chosen to complete the commission. As Beilby had not attended the actual event, he reconstructed the scene from photographs and television footage taken from the press gallery. He used a collage technique, cutting out figures from photographs and rearranging them into the final composition to then be painted.

In his painting, Beilby makes direct reference to Tom Roberts’s ‘Big Picture’, the seminal painting of the opening of the first Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia on 9 May 1901 in Melbourne. He used the same formal composition, placing the viewer at the same vantage point, and positioned Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at the front of the stage, illuminated by a shaft of light and mirroring the stance of her grandfather. While Roberts painted some of his friends and associates in the ‘Big Picture’, Beilby included himself and his wife posing as two journalists in the painting – can you spot them?

Marcus Beilby
Marcus Beilby (born 1951) is a Western Australian realist painter. In 1975 he first began exhibiting and received a Diploma of Fine Arts (Painting) from the Claremont Technical College. In 1987 he won the Sir John Sulman Prize for Australian Genre Painting. He is represented in cultural institutions across Australia and in numerous private collections.