Maurice Bramley (11 September 1898 – 15 June 1975)

(During May/June I'll be migrating a series of posts from my old blog pikitiapress.blogspot.com.au. I'll be slipping a few amongst current posts with added notes and galleries.)

Maurice Bramley was born in New Plymouth, New Zealand on September 11th, 1898. Bramley migrated to Sydney in the 1920's and worked as a commercial illustrator for newspapers and magazines from the 1930's through to the 1950's. Bramley worked on a wide range of material from advertising campaigns, newspaper, book cover and pulp illustrations. Later he depicted Marvel superheroes on the covers of Australian reprints of titles like The Avengers, Dardevil and Strange Tales a few years after their first American appearances in. From the late fifties to the early seventies he worked in Australian comics including stints on war and western titles for Page Publications and Horwitz Publishing House.

Maurice Bramley illustrated comics

Australian comics historian Kevin Patrick has researched Bramley extensively and written about him here and  here and here and here.

Daniel Best at 20th Century Danny Boy wrote an excellent piece about Maurice Bramley's work as cover artist for Horwitz Publications.

Daniel McKeown wrote about Bramley here and provides examples of his pulp and comic cover work.

In the fifties Bramley and his wife Dell lived in Tuross, New South Wale. The Tuross village website feature details of Bramley's career here.

Below are samples of his fifties illustrations for Pocket Book Storyteller Weekly.

Sources: Comics Down Under, Daniel McKeown at Ozcomics, turosshead.org, 20th Century Danny Boy.

Today: Other Worlds Zine Fair 2015 and Australian Graphic

Also today at the Sydney Writers festival, Australian Graphic, featuring Simon Hanselmann, Nicky Minus, Lachlan Conn and Leigh Rigozzi.

Time: 3pm - 4pm

Venue: Pier 2/3 Club Stage, Pier 2/3, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay

Writers festival Blurborgraphy,

"Exciting things are happening in Australian alternative comics. Join graphic novelists Simon Hanselmann, Nicky Minus, Lachlan Conn and Leigh Rigozzi for a series of visual readings from their diverse and idiosyncratic illustrated narratives. Hear tales of stoner witches, beautiful cannibals, failed relationships in Inner West pubs and masturbation fantasies set to the music of The Strokes."

The Cartoonists Part Three

The several page article 'The Cartoonists' appeared in the weekly New Zealand Heritage magazine published in the early 1970's and eventually collected as a set of Encyclopedias.

Read The Cartoonists Part One

read The Cartoonists Part Two

Nevile Lodge

Whatever he may have wished, Lodge actually produced an "average" New Zealander such as he counts himself to be—a character primarily interested in rugby, racing and beer. The social climber is as rarely evident as any individualist. As a result the reader finds in Lodge's cartoons more warmth and easy laughter than in anyone else's work. New Zealanders identify when Lodge comments on the day-to-day social events with which he deals best.

For example, in 1960 when fashion turned yet again to trousers for women, Lodge had a salesman calling at a suburban front door—"Good morning Sir or Madam." Again, in 1956 when individual citizens began playing with tape recorders, Lodge's rueful suburban man soliloquised—"My wife and I just had hard words —she threw our marriage tape at me."

Lodge's reaction to a 1957 suggestion that New Zealand borrow Swiss styles for its Mount Cook and Franz Josef hotels was to depict a guest returning to a hotel to report to his wife—"Well that's got rid of two pests. I just hit that bloke who yodels all the time behind the ear with a cuckoo clock." Also in 1957 when an Auckland trotting trainer was reported to have become a music teacher, Lodge's comment had all the casual philistinism of the middle New Zealander—"Look here, if you play that piece as fast as that again I'll have a swab taken."

Curiously enough, David Low, an expatriate for most of his life, seemed to be groping—towards the end of his career—for a similar protean man. The originals of his Colonel Blimp had largely disappeared from Britain years before Low—under criticism—dropped the Colonel from his cartoons. Replacement was a problem, and in the immediate post-war years when the United Nations was man-kind's not-yet-forlorn hope for a better future Low saw a possible new character in World Citizen, an international version of Minhinnick's John.

Predictably, World Citizen was dull. Not even David Low could make a consciously universal character interesting. The universality of men's predicament has always been better conveyed by such regional inventions as James Thurber's American male and female, and Jaroslav Hasek's good soldier Schweik.

"Premier Coates in a pensive Mood" by George Finey, published in the New Zealand's Artist' Annual, Christmas 1927. Such caricature has almost become unknown.

Caricature

A lack of convenient stereotypes has given New Zealand cartoonists a reverence for caricature—the exaggerated depiction of personality which can say much on its own but which often says more when combined with the broader satirical idea of a cartoon. In David Low that reverence for what he regarded as a higher art amounted to an obsession. Long passages of his otherwise excellent writing are devoted to the distinction between caricature and cartoon. He thus places his readers in a similar position to that of the schoolboy who wrote a famous literary criticism—"This book tells me more about penguins than I really wanted to know."

The newspaper or magazine reader is similarly placed. He judges a humorous or satirical drawing by the spontaneity with which it sums up a situation already known to him and the sense of proportion it brings to that situation. To him caricature is valuable in making public figures readily identifiable, but it is far from being essential to the quick comprehension of a cartoon. Witness the number of successful cartoonists who get by with printed labels on their principal characters.

Low was right in one respect. The art of caricature is difficult and rare. Among its New Zealand practitioners can be counted George Finey, George Pram, J. C. Blomfield, Stuart Peterson (arguably), Low himself, Counihan of the New Zealand Observer, P. G. Reid, J. T. Allen (whose Face Values is noteworthy in that its caricatures of academics such as Hight, Tocker, Sinclaire, Winterbourn and Farr are better than those of politicians such as Semple and Savage), and of course Gordon Minhinnick.

Stuart Peterson

J. C. Blomfield

Of that list Low achieved the greatest renown abroad and Minhinnick the greatest at home. Understandably they had a proper regard for each other's work. Low wished Minhinnick to take his place on the Evening Standard when he left it. In an introduction to the Arts Council's 1968 exhibition of 90 Low cartoons, Minhinnick wrote: "To the informed layman the first impression gained from Low's cartoons is the excellence of his draughtsmanship. It is so unquestionable that it is likely to be taken for granted by the uninformed. This is a pity, because Low's brush line at times rivals that of the classical Japanese masters. There are no gimmicks, no short cuts, seemingly no concessions whatever to that bugbear of all newspaper men—the clock. Every line is an essence of lines, every form in its rightful place, every expression, every action, is the epitome of what he wished to suggest. Nothing is superfluous. Nothing is wasted. Technically, Low was a master crafts-man." Identical words could reasonably be written of Gordon Minhinnick himself.

Gordon Minhinnick (New Zealand Herald)

Hal Gye (22 May 1888–25 November 1967)

Australian cartoonist/artist Harold Frederick Neville Gye was born today at Ryde, New South Wales in 1888.

Hal Gye by David Low

New Zealand cartoonist David Low wrote about his friendship with Gye and writer C. J. Dennis in his autobiography, Low's Autobiography.

"Hal was a fantastic chap, thin, with long hair parted in the middle, a way of waving his arms about and an irresistible wit. When he wasn't drawing theatrical caricatures for the Bulletin, or illustrating Den, he was painting water-colour symphonies with a dreamy effect which he produced by losing his temper with them and putting them under the tap. After the second jet of water the picture almost disappeared leaving plenty to the imagination, which pleased mightily those who had the imagination. Den's chief claim to fame at first was that he was the author of the Austrabloodylaise, a vernacular piece known far and wide in Australia, of which the opening stanza gives the flavour:

Fellers of Australia, blokes and coves and coots,
Pull yer bloody pants on, tie yer bloody boots.

But he was then deep in the planning of a volume, The Sentimental Bloke, which was to bring him wide fame and an honoured place in Australian poetry. Meanwhile Den filled in as a civil servant complete with two-inch starched collar and vest slip, an effect quite unsuited to his bony-nosed Roman face.

Here were a couple of characters in whose company I found rest and understanding. We could laugh, shout, sing, exult, mourn, curse the wrongdoer in the open, as we wrestled with our work. (I was always one to talk to my work as it came out on my old drawing-board perched on a broken arm-chair.) Our trio expanded into an odd mixture of fellowship. Painters, poets and writers, of course, actors, farmers, civil servants, business men, politicians, an occasional Cabinet Minister, and on one red-letter day even Melba herself, the immortal song-bird. All I remember of her was that she was a bullying woman who ate a good deal and swore a lot. It was all one. Even on the blackest days I found relief in that pool of goodwill. In no other company could I ever have tried the experiment of sharing a studio. I have had many since, but all by comparison have had a touch of loneliness."

Below: Hal Gye illustrations for C. J. Dennis' Doreen.

Low illustration and biography excerpt swiped from Percy Middlemiss' excellent Matilda blog which has many samples of Gye's art and biographical notes.

Minhinnick Wartime Cartoons

Selection of New Zealand cartoonist Sir Gordon Minhinnick's wartime cartoons from the Evening Standard. Minhinnick (13 June 1902 – 19 February 1992) had selections of his cartoons collected in annual books although many now exist only as yellowed newspaper cuttings. Through a combination of cartooning techniques Minhinnick took aim at the Axis Alliance, my favourite being the 'silent' cartoons that occasionally featured Mars, the Roman God of War, and no dialogue save a caption or title within the cartoon.