Design and Art Australia Online

painter, cartoonist and illustrator, was born on 17 November 1863 near Dungog in the NSW bush (according to birth certificate, Australian Dictionary of Biography & Sothebys - cited as 1864 [ sic ] by Rainbow, Christie’s, etc.), son of Irish-born Bridget Murray, aged 17, who in 1869 married his father, George Minns, a farmer. The family lived near Inverell, where Minns began his art career at the age of 14 taking drawing lessons from an “old lady in the town” (Lindesay, 1979, 13). Aged 17 he went to Sydney and entered the legal offices of Abbott & Allen, where he met Charles Conder and they decided to share a studio.

Minns studied art at Sydney Technical College under Lucien Henry , joined A.J. Daplyn 's life class at the Art Society of NSW and took lessons from Julian Ashton . Conder, already employed by the Illustrated Sydney News , got Minns his first job on this paper. Minns also drew for the Sydney Mail (William Moore, Lone Hand 2 March 1914, states that the two started on the ISN – repeated by Renniks and the ADB – while other sources state his earliest work was for the Mail ). Both men then drew for the Town and Country Journal , e.g. Minns 5 April 1890. On 9 June 1888 Minns married Harriet Ford in St John’s, Darlinghurst; they had no children.

Minns’s pro-suffrage cartoon, Just out of reach 1891, shows a woman carrying a baby chained by 'woman’s sphere’ and unable to reach a club labelled 'The Ballot’ to defend herself, her baby and other small children against fierce snakes released from boxes labelled 'Whiskey’, 'Seduction’, 'Gambling’ and 'Cruelty’ by four men who are each standing safely on top of a box. It was published in Vita Goldstein’s Women’s Suffrage Journal 1/7 (December 1891) with the above title and is the only cartoon ever used. The artist was acknowledged on page 8. The original, unsigned, drawing was presented to the State Library of New South Wales [SLNSW] by J.T. Fischer on 13 April 1937 (Mitchell Library [ML], transferred to SV/80 in August 1999 from SV*Cart/26: colour transparency digitised 2000).

Vane Lindesay (1979) considers Minns to be the first significant freelance Bulletin cartoonist. He began submitting cartoons on outback subjects in 1887 and continued to send them until 1937. The ML Bulletin collection has 103 original cartoons of 1899-30, 77 dated 1931-37 and undated, two political cartoons and four titles, suggestions, etc. [cartoons missing 1913, 1914, 1916] (acc. index). He first made a name for his 'Edwardian beauties’ in the Bulletin and the Lone Hand , although he is remembered today for his bush images – and for his Aboriginal gags, which Moore claims he introduced to the Bulletin . They include: The Original Land Proprietor, on the N.S.W. Boom-Bank Smash , an Aboriginal portrait head annotated: 'KING BILLY (loq): “Budgeree! You collar my land. Now you go bung. Ha, ha!”’ (cover, 10 October 1891). 'They [the Aboriginal people] have always interested me,’ he said years later (reported in W. Moore, Story of Australian Art vol.2, 115-116), 'owing to the peculiar way they express themselves. I don’t know how their humour would strike people abroad, but its appeal in this country is evident from the trouble bushmen take to send me jokes from all parts of Australia. When the black dies out, his humour will still stand.’

Minns painted and drew straight portraits and landscapes as well as urban cartoons and illustrations. The Art Gallery of New South Wales purchased his Season of Mists in 1891 and a painting of an Aboriginal subject in 1894. When J.F. Archibald took Robert Louis Stevenson to visit the artists’ camp at Balmoral in the 1890s, the visitor was sketched by Minns and by Percy Spence who were both living there with Julian Ashton , Streeton and Roberts (Rolfe, 43: see also Bohemians in the Bush cat.).

Minns and his wife went to England in 1895 and spent 20 years away from Australia. (In 1914 he was living at Hendon and was said to have been out of Australia for 18 years.) The 1898 Grafton Gallery Exhibition of Australian Art in London included three drawings by 'B.E. Minns of 121 Church Street, Chelsea, England’, lent by the Bulletin Newspaper Co. In England he drew for Punch (examples in 20 vol. selection c.1933, owned JSK), The Strand Magazine , St Paul’s Magazine , The Bystander , Idler, Black and White, London Opinion and other English periodicals. He also regularly sent work back to the Bulletin and Lone Hand . He exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Paris Salon where in 1913 he 'was represented by a striking group called “The Legion of Adversity”, suggested by Roderick Quinn’s poem, “Camp Within the West”.’ His pen and ink drawing on the subject appeared in Lone Hand in 1914 (Anon, 'B.E. Minns’, Lone Hand 2 March 1914, 262-263). Articles he wrote in England for the Lone Hand include a review of the Royal Academy Summer Show (August 1907, 386-88), 'Independents of Paris’ (August 1907, 388-90) and a review of the Paris salons (August 1907, 390-94). Drawings include The Poor Poet , seated drunk and/or mournful on a chair in a garret illustrating a poem by Victor Daley published June 1897, 167 (ill. Watkins). Drawings dated 1907 were used to illustrate Roderick Quinn’s The Advanced Idea , published 1 February 1910, 373-80. His illustration to John Carew’s poem, The Paying Guest , published May 1907, 100, is inscribed 'London’.

Minns’s many Bulletin drawings include society jokes like the rather Souterish Propinquity (a bike crash), annotated: 'They rode a Tandem Bike in fair/ And sometimes stormy weather;/ Engaged? Of course. You see they were/ A good deal thrown together/ B.E.’, published 1897. Others of 1897-98, all done in London, include: Bluffing It Out 1897 (unwittingly insulting a society woman’s husband, ill Rolfe, 180); a courting couple illustrating a ballad 'Goody Two-Shoes (An Australian Version)’ by “The Breaker” (Morant) (ill. Rolfe, 105); 'Visions, After a Severe Course of Penny Novelettes’ (a servant girl’s dreams), signed 'London '04’ and published 7 September 1905.

Lots of Minns’s Aboriginal cartoons and comic drawings were done in London; they were often used for the title page of the Christmas issue of the Bulletin . They include: 'King Billy (politely raising his belltopper): “You musn’t look at me like that – I’m a married man”’, 22 December 1900; Close up, marry me mine tinkit 1901 (ill. Moore II, facing p.114); Budgeree! Mary Ann 1908 (ink original Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, gift of Les Tanner 1971); Behind the Times. 'Billy (to tourist): “Yer never bin in a blacks’ camp?”/ Tourist: “There are no such things in my country.”/ Billy: “Well, Hingland MUST be a funny place”’ 1914 (ill. Rolfe, 92). Some Aboriginal jokes turn on status, e.g. The Monarchist . 'Australian Girl: “That’s King Billy and his Queen.”/ English Girl: (newly arrived): “What?!! Royalty?!! Hadn’t we better curtsey?”’ 24 September 1914 (original ML PX*D494/29). Others are simple puns, e.g. Subjugated. '(Nervous Bushwoman): “My Goodness! A wild black!”/ (Mary): “Oh, no, missus! He bery tame; he my ole man.”’ 1912 (original held in private collection).

Non-Aboriginal bush cartoons done during Minns’s expatriate years include: Well Stocked / “[Sydney is] ... the place for gettin’ a boy. You can just pick 'em and draft 'em and cull 'em over there” 1902 (bush damsel back home from a city visit, ill. Rolfe, 100); The Reservoir. 'New Chum: “Can you sell me some milk?”/ Cocky: “We ain’t got none.”/ New chum: “Why, there’s a whole cowful over there”’ 1911 (ill. Rolfe, 93). They often appeared most belatedly, e.g. a cartoon of an old maid in front of cupid’s arrow (a statue) titled She: “Who’s afraid!” was published in the Bulletin on 22 March 1922, but it is signed 'B.E. Minns/ 1901’ {original SLNSW}.

Minns returned to Sydney in 1915 at the outbreak of World War I. The paintings he was bringing back were destroyed in a shipboard fire en route. Cartoons done for the Bulletin back in Australia include: Too Dark for the Light Horse. 'A Question of Colour./ “Hulloa Jacky, not enlisted yet?”/ “Yes Boss! Tried to join Light Horse, but plurry sergeant turn me down. Him say: 'You too plurry dark for light horse’ – he, he”’ 1915 (ill. King, 111; also title of AWM exhibition) – presumably done back in Australia. Other wartime Bulletin cartoons include: The Pilgrim’s Progress (re digger being held back from Victory by Shirker, Wowser, Capitalist, etc) 2 March 1916, 12; “Help!” (re war continuing into 1918) 16 November 1916; Another Duffer (re Verdun) 1 June 1916, 13; In the Dark (re censorship) 4 May 1916, 12; Australia First! 6 April 1916, 12; The Easter Show – Machinery Section (German death 'harvesting’ machine) 20 April 1916; The Crucifixion (re war profiteering and strikes) 6 January 1916, 13.

Less topical and political are: The Struggle of the Hour (on 6 o’clock closing) 25 May 1916, 14; a bleak view of boarding house guests at dinner with their tough landlady and timid maid (very English), '“They tell me there’s a hypnotist in town who makes people eat candles and drink kerosene.”/ “What boarding house does he keep?”’ 1922 (ill. Rolfe, 179); and A Dream of Auld Lang Syne (n.d. full-page ill. Rolfe, 172) of an old man dreaming of his wild youth at Christmas time. Rolfe (196-97) illustrates four other Minns cartoons from the Bulletin (1905, 1921 & 2 of 1930), including Just Took Things As They Came. / Mrs Primanproper: “But these can’t all be your children. You told me you were an old maid.”/ Mary: “Yus, I ole maid orl right, but I not one o’ those fussy old maids”’ 1930. Rolfe (270) also mentions a Minns cartoon showing an Aboriginal woman cooking a snake with the caption 'And the serpent tempted her and she did eat’ (not illustrated).

Four Minns originals drawn for the Bulletin in the Art Gallery of Western Australia are (according to Janda Gooding’s catalogue): Squatter and Blackfellow , Out of Bounds, Loquat Jam and Rev. McSnagg and Sally, or Sally and the Minister . He contributed to the Bulletin for 50 years and occasionally to Smith’s Weekly . The latter include 'Eminent Artist: “I wish to see the editor”./ Boy: “The editor can’t see no one to-day”./ EA: “Well, show him these drawings”./ Office Boy: “Yessir. Will yer wait or call back for 'em?”’ 5 January 1924, 9. Two undated Smith’s Weekly originals from the Stan Cross collection are illustrated in Rainbow: '“Mary not too well this morning Jacky?”/ “No Boss. That your missus fault – gibbit plurry stays – ringbark her”’ and [hunter outside mia mia] '“What was the row about, Mary?”/ “Jacky stop out all night and spend all my plurry two bob”.’

He also made (straight) etchings of Aboriginal people, including Aboriginal Study , The Bees Nest 1924 (ML SV / 166), The Hunter (AGNSW: see file) and an Aboriginal woman and child 1924(?) (ML SV / 167). In 1928 the AGNSW commissioned him to paint a self-portrait in oils for the collection, along with George Lambert and John Longstaff . Although he mainly worked in watercolour, his top painting price ($28,000) was for an oil, Balmoral Beach , sold at Sotheby’s in August 1989, but Dedman notes that other oils have sold for well under $1,000.

Minns founded the Australian Watercolour Institute in 1924 and was its first president (1924-37). His watercolour, On The Harbour , offered by Christie’s Australia at Melbourne on 7 May 2003, lot 371, is dated 1924. Two watercolours, Preparing for Bed (a woman plaiting her hair) and Australian Aboriginal in War Paint , were offered at Christie’s Australian painting auction part 2, 27 November 1996, lots 354 (ill.) & 386. A watercolour Pisa [sic] Cottage, Bathurst 1932, from the collection of Dr Philip Rasmussen, was in Christies’ Australian and European Paintings , Melbourne 27-28 April 1999, lot 30. London’s Canon Gallery had Pitt Water, Sydney Harbour on sale for £4,200 at the Watercolour and Drawing Fair, London, in February 2001. Roger Dedman (2003) gives the record price for a Minns watercolour as $27,000, for Hauling Timber , which was sold at Sotheby’s in November 1988 (lot 330). Beach Party with Boats Moored , lot 240 at Christie’s sale of the Trout collection in June 1989, sold for $20,000. Sotheby’s offered his watercolour Pittwater , dated 1935, in its 7 May 2001 auction (lot 173) with an estimate of A$5,000-8,000. Lot 177 in Deutscher-Menzies’ Sydney auction of 5 March 2002, a very good, early watercolour, Bondi Beach 1925, was estimated at $6,000-9,000, while lot 179, an undated portrait of an Aboriginal girl, was estimated at $2,000-3,000.

Minns lived at Gordon on Sydney’s North Shore. His last cartoon appeared the week before he died, on 21 February 1937 while sketching at Taronga Park Zoo. He was cremated according to Anglican rites. In 1938 he was posthumously awarded the Sydney Sesquicentennial prize for a historical painting in oils, The Landing at Botany Bay 1788 painted in 1934, at the 'Art Competitions Exhibition: Australia’s 150th Anniversary Celebrations 1788-1938’ held at Sydney’s Education Department Art Gallery in February 1938 (cat. 18). The estimated price for this meeting of Cook and his embarking crew with a group of Aboriginal men when it was offered as lot 73 in Deutscher-Menzies Australian and International Fine Art Auction at Melbourne on 28-29 August 2002 was $35,000-45,000.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007