Angus Trumble

Angus Alexander Geoffrey Trumble (6 October 1964 – 8 October 2022) was an Australian scholar, art curator, and author. He was the director of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia, a senior research fellow at the National Museum of Australia, a curator at the Yale Center for British Art at Yale University, and at the Art Gallery of South Australia. His books include A Brief History of the Smile and The Finger: A Handbook.

Early life Trumble was born in Melbourne on 6 October 1964. He was the youngest of four sons of Peter Campbell Trumble, a lawyer, and Helen Trumble. He entered residence at Trinity College, Melbourne, in 1983 while studying fine arts and history at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1986. He subsequently interned at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, before studying for a master's degree at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome and the University of Melbourne. During this period he acquired significant portraits including those of William Bligh by John Webber and Helena Rubinstein by Graham Sutherland. Between 2019 and 2022 he was a senior research fellow at the National Museum of Australia. In 2015 he was named a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and in September 2022 was installed as an honorary fellow of his alma mater, Trinity College, Melbourne.

In addition to art, Trumble was the author of A Brief History of the Smile (2003) and The Finger: A Handbook (2010), and co-author (with Andrea Wolk Rager) of Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. At the time of his death he was working on a biography of Helena Rubinstein. He was a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, The Burlington Magazine, The Paris Review, Esopus Magazine, and Australian Book Review.

Personal life Trumble died on 8 October 2022, two days after his 58th birthday.

Published works A Brief History of the Smile (2003) The Finger: A Handbook (2010) Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (2013) , co-written with Andrea Wolk Rager. with a foreword by Sarah Krasnostein