painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born in London but came to Brisbane as a baby. [Possibly related to James Hingston, who wrote The Australian Abroad: Branches from the Main Routes Round the World [including Japan]. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1879].
He studied art at the Brisbane Technical College under Godfrey Rivers and became an illustrator and cartoonist on Brisbane Truth (c.1901-12) and the Worker (1901). The first Worker cartoon signed 'A.J. Hingston’ is Home They Brought Their Warrior Dead (mourning politicians with a dead Australian South Pacific Islander labourer) published 6 April 1901. Other cartoons signed 'A.J.H.’ include The Workers’ Design for a Triumphal Arch 12 January 1900 (Labour supporting capitalism, the imperial army and the police, included in McCracken 2001), Wheels Within Wheels (anti-imperialism vignettes) 19 January 1901, Food for Powder and Fever (skeletons leading men to a ship bound for South Africa) 19 March 1901 (ill. Harris, p.141), a cartoon in the form of a fake stained-glass window showing a British soldier bayonetting a Boer, cover 1 June 1901, and The Prosperous Kanaka 31 August 1901 (affluent Australian South Pacific Islander on a bike).
As political caricaturist for the United Empire Trade League, Hingston went to London and worked for the Daily Mail (1902-3) and John Bull (1903). He was still 'cartooning in the interests of Protection’ and illustrating books in London in 1904, according to Steele Rudd’s Magazine 1 (p.22). After returning to Brisbane c.1908 he contributed to the weekly Comic Australian (Sydney 1911-13), e.g. Brisbane by the Week 14 October 1911, as well as Truth .
Hingston also painted in oils, watercolours and pastels. He exhibited his pictures, along with an occasional illustrative work, with the QAS in 1901 ( Afternoon , oil l/s ill. in cat. & A Study oil), 1902 (six oil & two w/c l/s and b/w 'sketches’), 1908 (oil view of Surbiton in Surrey and six w/c views of local & poetic subjects), 1909 (oils Maternity & A Guiding Light , Brummagem Merchant, Ceylon and A Byway, Kingston on Thames , four English & Aust w/cs and many paintings for sale in 'old work and on loan’ section, including views of the Thames, Weymouth, Surbiton, Moreton Bay, 'old bridge’, 'bush road’ 'summer’, 'Flower sellers, London’, Cleveland, Ormiston, et al.), 1910 (oil l/s & lots of local w/c views), 1911 (Ormiston, 'bay’, Albion Hill, Kingston oils & w/c The Sugar Bag 'for book illustration’).
Later Hingston spent much time at Cleveland and Ormiston with his great friend the painter Richard Randall , who lived in the area. He died in Brisbane on 13 September 1912, aged 37. An exhibition of his cartoons and caricatures was held at the Hall of the Muses in 1928. The SLQ published a small catalogue of his work in its collections 'some years ago’.
