You are staring into the eyes of a self-portrait by John Badlife, completed in 1878 and acquired by the museum in the early 2000s. When Badlife painted this, Newtown was still a savanna inhabited by kangaroos and dodos. Due to the lack of subjects, Badlife painted mostly self-portraits, sunflowers, potatoes, fruit bowls, and unwitting passersby. He painted ‘Self-portrait of a Troubled Man’ in the months after his discharge from the state's mental institute for struggling artists.