The ACA was proud to announce the first inductees into the Australian Cartoonists Hall Of Fame at the 25th Stanley Awards at Darling Harbour, Sydney on November 14, 2009. Inductees were nominated by members of the ACA with a special Hall Of Fame committee selecting this inaugural group of cartoonists, both past and present, to be bestowed with this honour.
Jimmy Bancks
Inducted into the Hall Of Fame 2009.
BANCKS, Jim (James) Charles, b. Enmore NSW 1889, d. Sydney NSW 1952 - artist/cartoonist. Bancks' first job as an artist was on The Bulletinwhere he worked for eight years before working for The Sun. He started a number of comic strips The Blimps (1923), Mr Melbourne Day by Day (1925). Drew Us Fellers in 1921, changed name to Ginger Meggs 1939. Bancks was the political cartoonist for the Evening Sun in Melbourne 1923-25 and became Australia's highest paid black-and-white artist, receiving 80 pounds a week in the 1930s.
After Jimmy Bancks, Ginger Meggs was drawn by Ron Vivian, then Lloyd Piper, James Kemsley and Jason Chatfield. Ginger Meggs was adapted into a feature film by Jonathan Dawson in 1982.
Awards
Career predated Walkley Awards and Stanley Awards.
Stan Cross
Inducted into the Hall Of Fame 2009
CROSS, STAN (Stanley) b. Los Angeles USA 1888, d. Armidale NSW 1977 - artist/cartoonist/author. Cross started work in Perth at the WA Railways Department while drawing freelance for Sunday Times, Western Mail and the United Licensed Victuallers Association Journal. He moved to Smith's Weekly 1919 at 5 pounds a week. He drew a number of comic strips The Vauderilleans, You and Me (1920) name changed to The Potts, Dad and Dave and in July 1933 drew what is said to be 'the funniest joke ever produced in Australia with some people chiming it to be 'the all-time world's best' - 'For gor'sake stop laughing, this is serious!'.
He was the second artist to join the paper and became the third art director and was said to be one of the highest paid artist working in Australian media. After falling out with the management Cross left Smith's at the end of 1939 and was quickly offered work with The Herald in Melbourne by Keith Murdoch. There he drew a new comic The Winks (1940) but it was soon modified and the name changed to Wally and the Major.
Black and White Artists' Club president 1931-54, and considered by many to be one of Australia's greatest newspaper artists. He also wrote books on accountancy, economics and English grammar. Cross continued to draw Wally and the Major until failing eyesight forced him to get help with the drawings early in 1970. Carl Lyon started to ink in Cross' pencil drawings. Later Lyon took over all the drawing with Cross writing the stories. Eventually Lyon took over completely and Cross retired late in the year. He died in Armidale, NSW on 16 June 1977 at the age of 89. The ACA's annual Stanley Awards are named after him.
Awards
Career predated Walkley Awards and Stanley Awards.
Will Dyson
Inducted into the Hall Of Fame 2009.
DYSON, HENRY WILLIAM (Will) b. Alfredtown Vic 1880, d. London 1938, brother of Edward and Ambrose, married Ruby Lindsay (who drew under the name of Ruby Lind) 1910, sister of Norman Lindsay. Started contributing drawings to The Bulletin 1897 along with The Gadfly in Adelaide. Succeeded his elder brother on the Adelaide Critic in 1903. Also contributed to the Clarion, Melbourne Punch and Table Talk.
Left Australia 1910 for London and was appointed cartoonist-in-chief on the Daily Herald quickly became recognised as one of the best cartoonists in Europe. In 1915 became an official Australian war artist. Returned to Australia 1925 worked on The Herald in Melbourne. Returned to England 1930 to work on The Herald until he died in 1938.
Awards
Career predated Walkley Awards and Stanley Awards.
George Finey
Inducted into the Hall Of Fame 2009.
FINEY, GEORGE b. Auckland New Zealand 1895, d. Blue Mountains NSW 1987. Arrived in Sydney 1919, joined the art staff Smith's Weekly in 1922. He became one of the most famous black and white artists working in Australia and was considered by Stan Cross to be the greatest of Australia's newspaper artists. After leaving Smith's he turned to painting and political cartooning in the 1940s for the Daily Telegraph in Sydney. Not long after WW2 ended he had an exhibition of paintings in Japan. In 1978 he had a retrospective at the Sydney Opera House and his last exhibition of paintings was in the Blue Mountains.
Awards
Career predated Walkley Awards and Stanley Awards.
Percy Leason
Inducted into the Hall Of Fame 2009.
LEASON, PERCIVAL ALEXANDER, b. Kaniva, Vic, 1889, d. New York 1959 painter/cartoonist/illustrator and teacher. Apprenticed in lithographic drawing for five years' joined the advertising firm of Smith & Julius in Sydney 1917. Engaged by The Bulletin to replace David Low as a political cartoonist before moving to Melbourne Punch and Table Talk returning to The Bulletin in the late 1920s. Went to America 1938 and became a successful illustrator and taught at the Staten Island Institute of Art and Science.
Awards
Career predated Walkley Awards and Stanley Awards.
Pat Oliphant
Inducted into the Hall Of Fame 2009
Patrick Bruce "Pat" Oliphant (b. July 24, 1934 in Adelaide, South Australia) is the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world, described by the New York Times as "the most influential cartoonist now working". His trademark is a small penguin character named Punk, who is often seen making a sarcastic comment about the subject of the panel.
Oliphant's career, which spans over fifty years, began in 1952 as a copyboy with The News in Adelaide. He continued in the newspaper business in Australia until he emigrated to the United States in 1964. Once in the U.S., he first worked at The Denver Post. His strip was nationally syndicated and internationally syndicated in 1965. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1967 for his February 1, 1966 cartoon They Won't Get Us To The Conference Table ... Will They?. Oliphant moved to the now defunct Washington Star for six years, until the paper folded in 1981.
Oliphant's work has appeared in several exhibitions, most notably at the National Portrait Gallery. He has also crafted a series of small sculptures based on his caricatures of various political figures, which have been displayed alongside his drawings in some exhibitions.
Awards
In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, Oliphant won the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award seven times in 1971, 1973, 1974, 1984, 1989, 1990, and 1991, the Reuben Award twice in 1968 and 1972 and the Thomas Nast Prize.
Norman Lindsay
Inducted into the Hall Of Fame 2010
Lindsay is widely regarded as one of Australia's greatest artists, producing a vast body of work in different media, including pen drawing, etching, watercolour, oil and sculptures in concrete and bronze.
A large body of his work is housed in his former home at Faulconbridge, New South Wales, now the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum, and many works reside in private and corporate collections. His art continues to climb in value today. In 2002, a record price was attained for his oil painting Spring's Innocence, which sold to the National Gallery of Victoria for A$333,900.
His frank and sumptuous nudes were highly controversial. In 1940, Soady took sixteen crates of paintings, drawings and etchings to the U.S. to protect them from the war. Unfortunately, they were discovered when the train they were on caught fire and were impounded and subsequently burned as pornography by American officials. Soady's older brother Lionel remembers Lindsay's reaction: "Don't worry, I'll do more."
Lindsay's creative output was vast, his energy enormous. Several eyewitness accounts tell of his working practices in the 1920s. He would wake early and produce a watercolour before breakfast, then by mid-morning he would be in his etching studio where he would work until late afternoon. He would work on a concrete sculpture in the garden during the afternoon and in the evening write a new chapter for whatever novel he was working on at the time.
As a break, he would work on a model ship some days. He was highly inventive, melting down the lead casings of oil paint tubes to use for the figures on his model ships, made a large easel using a door, carved and decorated furniture, designed and built chairs, created garden planters, Roman columns and built his own additions to the Faulconbridge property.
In 1938, Lindsay published Age of Consent, which focused on the experience of a middle-aged painter on a trip to a rural area, who meets an adolescent girl who serves as his model, and then lover. The book, published in Britain, was banned in Australia until 1962.
In 1895, Lindsay moved to Melbourne to work on a local magazine with his older brother Lionel. His Melbourne experiences are described in Rooms and Houses. In 1901, he and Lionel joined the staff of the Sydney Bulletin, a weekly newspaper, magazine and review. His association there would last fifty years. Lindsay wrote the children's classic The Magic Pudding published in 1918 and created a scandal when his novel Redheap (supposedly based on his hometown, Creswick) was banned due to censorship laws. Many of his novels have a frankness and vitality that matches his art.
Lindsay also worked as an editorial cartoonist, notable for often illustrating the racist and right-wing political leanings that dominated The Bulletin at that time; the "Red Menace" and "Yellow Peril" were popular themes in his cartoons. These attitudes occasionally spilled over into his other work, and modern editions of The Magic Pudding often omit one couplet in which "you unmitigated Jew" is used as an insult.
Lindsay was associated with a number of poets, such as Kenneth Slessor, Francis Webb and Hugh McCrae, influencing them in part through a philosophical system outlined in his book Creative Effort. He also illustrated the cover for the seminal Henry Lawson book, While the Billy Boils. Lindsay's son, Jack Lindsay, emigrated to England, where he set up Fanfrolico Press, which issued works illustrated by Lindsay.
Lindsay travelled to Europe in 1909, Rose followed later. In Naples he began 100 pen-and-ink illustrations for Petronius' Satyricon. Visits to the then South Kensington Museum where he made sketches of model ships in the Museum's collection stimulated a lifelong interest in ship models. The Lindsays returned to Australia in 1911.
The first major screen adaptation of Lindsay's literary works was the (1969) Anglo-Australian co-production Age of Consent; adapted from Lindsay's 1935 novel. It was the last full length feature film directed by Michael Powell and starred James Mason and Helen Mirren. In (1994) Sam Neill played a fictionalised version of Lindsay in John Duigan's Sirens, set and filmed primarily at Lindsay's Faulconbridge home. The film is also notable as the movie debut of Australian supermodel Elle MacPherson.
In 1972 five novels were adapted for TV as part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Norman Lindsay festival. These were Halfway to Nowhere (adapted by Cliff Green), "Redheap" (adapted by Eleanor Witcombe), A Curate in Bohemia (adapted by Michael Boddy), The Cousin from Fiji (adapted by Barbara Vernon) and Dust or Polish (adapted by Peter Kenna).
Awards
Career predated Walkley Awards and Stanley Awards.
Sir David Low
Sir David Low
David Alexander Cecil Low (1891-1963) a New Zealander who worked on The Bulletin from 1911 to 1919 before moving to Britain and being recognized as one of the great cartoonists of the 20th century.
Awards:
Career predated Walkley Awards and Stanley Awards.
Knighted (Knights Bachelor) in 1962
Phil May
Philip William May was born at Wortley, near Leeds, the son of an engineer. His father died when the child was nine years old. His mother was the daughter of Eugene Macarthy, one time manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. She was left in very poor circumstances and the family had a great struggle to exist. His grandfather, a country gentleman, had some talent as a draughtsman and liked making caricatures.
At the age of twelve, in Leeds, Phil became friendly with Fred Fox, whose father was the scenic artist at the recently opened Grand Theatre. This gave him a free run of the theatre, where he used to sketch sections of other people's designs for costumes,as well as sketching actor's portraits for which he received 1s, later rising to 5s. Another of his contemporaries was Walter Curtis, who became prominent as a Music Hall comedian and general entertainer. Soon, Phil May had begun to earn his living in a solicitor's office; before he was fifteen he had acted as time-keeper at a foundry, had tried to become a jockey and had been on the stage at Scarborough and Leeds. He was fond of drawing and when only 14 years old had drawings accepted for the Yorkshire Gossip. When he was about seventeen he went to London with a sovereign in his pocket. He suffered extreme want, sleeping out in the parks and streets, until he obtained employment as designer to a theatrical costumier. He also drew posters and cartoons, and for about two years worked for the St Stephens Review, until he was advised to go to Australia for his health.
During the three years (1886–1889) he spent there he was attached to The Sydney Bulletin, or The Bulletin as it was better known, for which many of his best drawings were made. He produced about 800 drawings for The Bulletin.
On his return to Europe he went to Paris by way of Rome, where he worked hard for some time before he appeared in 1892 in London to resume his interrupted connection with the St Stephens Review. His studies of the London guttersnipe and the coster-girl rapidly made him famous. His overflowing sense of fun, his genuine sympathy with his subjects, and his kindly wit were on a par with his artistic ability. It was often said that the extraordinary economy of line which was a characteristic feature of his drawings had been forced upon him by the deficiencies of the printing machines of the Sydney Bulletin. It was in fact the result of a laborious process which involved a number of preliminary sketches, and of a carefully considered system of elimination. His later work included some excellent political portraits. He became a regular member of the staff of Punch in 1896, and in his later years his services were retained exclusively for Punch and The Graphic. He was a founder member in 1898 of the London Sketch Club. He died in 1903.
There was an exhibition of his drawings at the Fine Arts Society in 1895, and another at the Leicester Galleries in 1903. A selection of his drawings contributed to the periodical press. Examples of his work will be found at the leading Australian galleries, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the British Museum. From 1892-1904 there were thirteen editions of Phil May's Illustrated Winter Annual with three supplemental Summer Annuals.[1] In addition to his Summer and Winter Annuals various collections were published, including Phil May's Sketch Book (1895), Phil May's Guttersnipes (1896), Phil May's Graphic Pictures and Phil May's A. B. C. (1897), Phil May's Album (1899), Phil May, Sketches from Punch (1903). Posthumous publications include Phil May in Australia (1904), The Phil May Folio (1904), and Humorists of the Pencil, Phil May (1908).
Awards:
Career predated Walkley Awards and Stanley Awards.
May Gibbs
Inducted into the Hall Of Fame 2011
Cecilia May Gibbs was born in Kent, in the United Kingdom, to Herbert William Gibbs and Cecilia Rogers, who were both talented people. She was their second child, and as she was named after her mother, had the nickname "Mamie". The family moved to South Australia to set up a farm in 1879 due to Herbert's failing eyesight, the result of a boyhood injury. However, as May had caught the measles, her father and uncle went to Australia, leaving her mother in England to care for the children. On 1 June 1881, the Gibbs brothers arrived in South Australia, and began to look for the land arranged for them by a relative of theirs. Over the next few months, the brothers became disillusioned with the land. Cecilia discovered that she was pregnant again, and decided to make the voyage to Australia with her children. Despite her parents' dismay, Cecilia and the children left, and her third child, Ivan, was born at sea. A drought in the area caused the family to move again, to Norwood. In 1885, the family moved again to a farm property in Harvey, Western Australia. When May was eight years old, she was given a pony by her father.
May enjoyed exploring the bush riding her pony, Brownie,and began to paint and write about the bush at this time. This period of her childhood, and her imaginative interpretation of the bush, was formative in the development of the anthropmorphic bush setting found in her work. When May was 10, the family moved to Perth, and in 1889 May was published for the first time - in the Christmas edition of the W.A. Bulletin. A number of return trips to England found her absent from that state, but in 1905 May was working for the Western Mail.After finishing school, Gibbs spent seven years studying art in the UK. While overseas, she published her first book, About Us. In 1913 she returned to Australia, and took up residence at Nutcote, in Neutral Bay, in Sydney, New South Wales.
1913 also marked the first public appearance of the gumnut babies, on the front cover of The Missing Button, by Ethel Turner, which Gibbs had illustrated. She produced postcards depicting gumnut babies in uniform to support Australia's role in World War One at this time. Gibbs' first book about the gumnut babies, appropriately titled Gumnut Babies, was published in 1916. It was soon followed, in 1918, by her most famous work, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Gibbs wrote many books on the theme of the gumnut babies.
Gibbs married Bertram James Ossoli Kelly, a mining agent, on the 17 April 1919, whom she met during a visit to Perth. They returned to live in Sydney, building a house in Neutral Bay.
Gibbs continued to write and illustrate children's books, publishing Little Ragged Blossom in 1920 and Little Obelia the following year. In addition to her work illustrating and writing, Gibbs also maintained two comic strips, Bib and Bub 1924-1967 and Tiggy Touchwood 1925-1931, in opposition newspapers. Tiggy Touchwood appeared in the Sunday Sun under the signature 'Sam Cottman'. The comic strips were published in newspapers in most Australian states and also in New Zealand. In 1923 she published Nuttybub and Nittersing and in 1929 Two Little Gum-Nuts. All her books have been reprinted numerous times and five cartoon books of Bib and Bub have been published.
May Gibbs died in Sydney on 27 November 1969, but her legacy to children lives on. Gibbs bequeathed the copyright from the designs of her bush characters and her stories to Northcott Disability Services (formerly The NSW Society for Crippled Children) and The Spastic Centre of NSW. The residue of her estate was left to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund.
In 1985 a postage stamp honouring Gibbs, or her best known creations, was issued by Australia Post as part of a set of five commemorating children's books.
Awards
Career predated the Walkley Awards and the Stanley Awards.