While his life was short, Hugh Ramsay condensed enough work in his career as an artist to last well beyond his lifetime.

But while many in the art world consider him one of the country's finest artists, Ramsay is barely known throughout Australia.

The National Gallery of Australia is hoping to change that with a major retrospective of Ramsay's work which will run throughout the summer.

The show brings together paintings, drawings, sketchbooks and letters from collections around the country to celebrate his achievements.

Head of Australian Art Deborah Hart, who has spent years putting together this show, said while Ramsay had been a prodigy who died far too young, the work itself should to be celebrated.

"He deserves to be better known in Australia, and that's really one of the key aims of this exhibition, to show people what he did, not what he might have done," she said.

Known as an 'artist's artist', Ramsay entered the National Gallery School in Melbourne, against his father's wishes, when he was just 16.

He quickly gained the admiration of his teachers and peers, and painted many portraits of his, to whom he was close, and it was his friends and fellow students who helped him scrape together enough money to travel to Paris, then considered the centre of the art world.

There, he shared a freezing studio above a soda factory in Montparnasse with another Australian artist, and created dozens of self-portraits.

He also had four works accepted and hung in the New Salon in 1902, a rare feat for anyone, let alone a relatively unknown Australian artist.

While visiting the opera star Nellie Melba in London, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and returned to Australia.

Back in Victoria, he ignored doctor's orders and ramped up his practice, creating some of his best works, before dying in 1906 at the age of 28.