Barry Humphries: The Personal Collection
Christies, London
February 2025
Barry Humphries: The Personal Collection presents an unprecedented opportunity to encounter the private world of one of the most distinctive cultural figures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Revered internationally for his celebrated stage creations, among them the incomparable Dame Edna Everage, Humphries (1934–2023) was equally devoted to an intellectual and artistic life pursued away from the spotlight. This exhibition unveils that lesser-known dimension, assembling more than two hundred works that reflect his discerning eye, refined sensibility, and profound engagement with art, literature, and design.
At the heart of the presentation is Humphries’s esteemed collection of fin-de-siècle and Symbolist masterpieces, featuring rare works by Fernand Khnopff, Jean Delville, Franz von Stuck, and their contemporaries. These are complemented by important Australian and European paintings, including Charles Conder’s Sand dunes, Ambleteuse, a work emblematic of Humphries’s long-standing admiration for artistic innovation at the turn of the century. Alongside these paintings, an exceptional selection of manuscripts, first editions, and Wilde-iana offers insight into Humphries’s lifelong reverence for the written word, literature, and the decadent imagination.
The exhibition further includes a curated ensemble of personal artefacts and theatrical accoutrements, from bespoke costumes to iconic accessories, objects that evoke the wit, daring, and theatrical brilliance for which Humphries remains beloved.
Taken together, Barry Humphries: The Personal Collection reveals a richly layered portrait of a consummate aesthete. It celebrates a life shaped equally by performance and erudition, and honours a collector whose passions were as expansive and extraordinary as the characters he bestowed upon the world.