Design and Art Australia Online

painter, illustrator, cartoonist, architect, town planner, author, editor and inventor, husband of the architect and town planner Florence Taylor, née Parsons, was born in Sydney on 1 August 1872, second son of George Faulty Taylor, an Australian-born fruiterer, and his Irish wife, Annie Maria né e McFadden. Educated at Marist Brothers and Sydney Technical College (Building), he worked as an architect then joined the NSW Mines Department. Finally in the 1890s he worked solely an artist, chiefly living by cartooning, especially for the Bulletin and London Punch .

He was a fluid and rapid sketcher. At a Smoke Night for the Art Society of NSW in September 1897, it was noted: 'But to draw lightning sketches, with all the disadvantages of brown paper, in front of a gallery of critics, and gain not only a favourable verdict but a storm of cheers – that is something of which to be proud; and so Messrs A.R. Coffey, Perry, Spence , Leon Pole, G. Taylor, and Salvana are to be complimented on that often mentioned but seldom realised event-an artistic success’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 13 September 1897, 3).

Above all, Taylor was a highly energetic achiever (unlike most of his fellow members of the Dawn and Dusk Club). So when he published Those Were The Days (Sydney: Tyrell’s, 1918), many of his colleagues were suspicious of his stories claiming he had been far too busy to have attended many of the events he described (acc. Kirkpatrick). While doing poster work at John Sands he invented a way of casting posters in high relief rather than having to print them and produced a highly successful set of coloured caricatures in relief. Adapted to building materials his 'bagasse’ invention – a sort of cement plaster – proved most lucrative after he patented it (with Alexander Knox) and exhibited examples all over the world ( AAA ). It won him a gold medal at the 1897 Queensland International Exhibition.

In 1901 Sydney’s major – and most expensive – Federation arch, the Commonwealth Arch at the intersection of Park and Elizabeth Streets designed by Varney Parkes (son of Henry Parkes, the 'father of Federation) and built by George Hudson and Son of Redfern, which cost £1,000 and was said to look as if it was made of marble, was actually a wooden frame covered in Taylor and Knox’s 'Bagasse fibrous composition’, which could be sawn and nailed and generally worked like timber. The classic triumphal arch (topped with a dome with a kangaroo and emu) contained mottos and names, three busts of Parkes and one of William Lyne, Edmund Barton and George Reid, statuettes of Sir John Robertson and W.B. Dalley, a relief of the First Federal Convention balanced by an allegorical, 'futuristic’ portrayal of the first Federal Parliament, which was not to meet for five months. There was also set of low-relief spandrel decorations executed by sculptors Macintosh , James White , Nelson Illingworth and James Sherriff featuring the single figure of a seated allegorical woman (NSW & Vic in the wide central arch, SA, Qld, Tas and WA in the flanking ones. Above the side passageways were four oil paintings done under the direction of William Lister Lister , President of the NSW Art Society. F.R. Mahony depicted Australia’s mounted soldiers of the Queen, a Lancer, a member of the Mounted Infantry and a member of the First Australian Horse; Arthur Collingridge did the landing of Captain Cook; Charles C.S. Tindall showed Sir William Denison landing as 1st Governor of NSW after the advent of responsible government; and Joseph Wolinski showed the birth of the Commonwealth as allegorical female figures. (Tessa Milne, Archways to Federation , Researching Federation Manual No.2, 1901 Centre, University of Technology, Sydney, 2001, pp.42-45.)

Taylor contributed cartoons to the Bulletin in 1897-98 and again later: Mitchell library [ML] has various originals, while National Library of Australia [NLA] has neg. of Another Case of the Evils of State Socialism , published 23 May 1903. In 1898 he founded his own comic paper, Ha Ha , for which he wrote most of the articles, drew the illustrations and engraved some of the blocks. When it failed he freelanced as a cartoonist for the Sunday Times , Melbourne Punch and other Australian papers; he also contributed cartoons to London Punch . 'Federation Ode’ from Taylor’s Blue Book , Sydney c.1901 is in NLA [neg. 22749]. It is unknown if he or Laurie Tayler did the anti-Commonwealth cartoon (NLA neg,) apparently signed 'Tayler’ but listed as 'Taylor’ by McCracken, published Sydney Daily Telegraph 20 June 1899: Vote “NO” – NSW and her duty to posterity (ill. Gillian McCracken, Federation! But who makes the nation? Museums and Galleries Foundation of NSW exhibition catalogue, 2001, p.16) G.A. Taylor also contributed to The Commonwealth, an annual of Australian art and literature 1-2 (1901-2) and its successor, Rowlandson’s Success (1907-8).

A large number of Taylor’s drawings were made into postcards, virtually all comic. There is some speculation that a number of these postcards were executed by C.E. Taylor as they are signed as such but given their content it would seem that C.E. Taylor and G.A Taylor are the same person in this instance. Most of these postcard images were taken from Taylor’s b/w pen-and-ink originals, with bright colours added by the printer. Unembellished black and white examples include: a series of 'comic’ Aboriginal sketches (e.g. The Kanaka Nigger , Sometimes he deals with Policemen & First Aid ), a series on The Adventures of a Jackaroo ('Losing his money – he starts “prospecting” in Sydney Harbour’, 'He tackles shearing!’) and an Australian Comic Alphabet Series .

Taylor was a Council member of the Royal Art Society (NSW). He founded the Wireless Institute of NSW and Building magazine. He published many booklets and articles on a great variety of subjects, including A History of Caricature (Schaeffer Library; slides from it in Fine Arts Dept, University of Sydney). He wrote art criticism for Sydney newspapers and for London’s Studio magazine. An article on Australian black and white art appeared The Commonwealth in 1902-3.

Taylor’s original artworks include: a large monochrome gouache The Ebb Tide depicting a Chinese opium den (ML V*ART/39), inscribed verso: 'Exhibitions/ Art Society NSW 1897/ Qld International 1897 ['where it held the post of honor’, according to AAA , p.152] / Wellington NZ Art Gallery 1898’; Taylor said 'he spent two awful nights in the Sydney opium dens in order to gather material’ ( AAA 1/12/1902, p.152). Other ML ink and wash large originals are: an employer standing on an 'established business’ block with 'Labor’ as a villain about to blow it up, signed 'Taylor 1913’ (V*CART 17); The Son of Man hath no place to rest his head (V*ART 12); an orphan child with the 'shades’ of his parents (V*ART 16); Capitalist and Worker (V*ART 13); Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth re bequeathing money to the church versus a starving widow (V*ART/29); a profiteer on a heap of money versus a stonebreaker (V*ART/23); The Siren – a woman approaching a man with Death behind her (V*ART/43); The Suicide (”...wilful deed shall wreck life’s plan/ ...soul must serve its destined span”: V*ART 19); “Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?” – a soldier priest with battle scene in the background (V*ART 14); “Oh For a Touch of a Vanished Hand” (V*ART 11); The Funeral March of a Conqueror 1928 (V*ART 9); a Boer War drawing labelled The Conqueror ('The Harvest’ under the picture) at ML V*ART 21: see slides and photos. His patriotic painting of a soldier was reproduced in Town and Country Journal on 27 January 1900, 42. NLA holds his coloured caricature of Billy Hughes as Lord High Executioner from The Mikado (1923).

An epileptic, George Taylor drowned in the bath at his Sydney home on 20 January 1928, survived by his widow, the architect and town planner Florence Taylor .

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007