Shared grief from the loss of a loved one to cancer is what drew artist Jeremy Eden to actor Samuel Johnson for this year’s Archibald Prize. And it was the pain etched in Johnson’s face in the resulting portrait that struck a chord with the voting public.

On Wednesday, Eden and Johnson’s heartfelt collaboration was named the Archibald Prize’s people’s choice, from among 52 finalists.

Johnson established the cancer charity Love Your Sister in 2012 to raise awareness for breast cancer and has since raised over $15 million. His beloved sister Connie died in 2017. Eden lost his mother Annette to aggressive cancer nine years earlier.

An unrepresented artist who only began painting in oils four years ago, Eden won the $5000 cash prize with what is only his second-ever entry in the Archibald Prize. He was a finalist with his first in 2021 of actor Firass Dirani, who is well known for TV shows Underbelly: The Golden Mile and SAS Australia.

Eden first reached out to Johnson a couple of years ago. After his Dirani portrait, he met Johnson by video in 2021. “When I first went to [Johnson], I wanted to tell him what I’d been through and how that resonated with his life story, having lost his sister to cancer,” Eden recounted.

“Having lost my mum to cancer, I thought we had quite a lot to bond over. When I went down to Melbourne to meet him, the first thing I did was show him a picture of my mum.”

Johnson, then recovering from a near-fatal car accident, took the photo of the artist’s mother in his hand, and channelled memories of his sister. Johnson’s creased face and the raw emotion welling in his eyes were “somewhat semi-autobiographical of how I feel,” Eden says.

It was empathy for the artist and his subject that Maud Page, deputy director of the Art Gallery of NSW, believes drew the public to Eden’s portrait. “I do think it’s about people feeling genuinely overwhelmed by things that are happening nationally and internationally and looking inward to their own experiences and thinking about family.”