Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist, illustrator and sculptor, was born in London but came to New Zealand with his parents at the age of six. He moved to Sydney in 1877 and joined the staff of the printers Gibbs, Shallard & Co. At Victoria in 1878 he covered the Jolimont railway disaster for the Illustrated Australian News as an on-the-spot witness. He contributed illustrations to Sydney’s Town and Country Journal in 1879-80 (or to 1883 acc. DAA note), e.g. a cartoon-like woodcut initialled “S.B.”, Signing Her Agreement (on a domestic servants’ agency) 10 July 1879, 120. A second drawing, The Hiring Room , appears on the same page but is unsigned [both ill. Margot Riley, 'A refuge for the women of colonial Sydney’ (on Hyde Park Barracks), Australian Antique Collector 42nd edn (July-December 1991), 70-71].

William Moore (ii, p.110) reproduces a long quote from Begg about his manner of working at the time:

Whenever we had work to do for the Journal , we would whenever time allowed, make our way to the cliffs above Bondi, taking our boxwood with us. Vignetting for newspaper illustrations was much in vogue at the time, so our boxwood was usually a round of wood. Bondi in those days was exactly as nature had made it. Lying on the cliffs in this open-air studio the drawing would be made. Then it was Appleton’s turn [ L. Appleton , who belonged to a family of wood engravers in London], as, after getting back to Sydney, he would have the job of sitting up all night engraving it. Shipwrecks were favourite subjects for illustration. I had done one of a large sailing-ship and not long after a big steamer was wrecked. Before instructing me to deal with this subject, the art editor took me aside and said solemnly, “Now we know you can draw a sailing-ship, but” (with great caution) “can you draw a steamer?”

Begg designed the face of the medal awarded at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition and the obverse of the Sydney International Exhibition Medal in 1879 (see James W. Sayers file for description and illustration, Sydney Mail 5 April 1879). The Committee on Art for the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition resolved to remunerate those engaged in the drawing of the Design for the Certificate of Merit including: 'to Messrs S. Begg and H. Kent , for conjoint design, bearing the motto Sidere Mens Eadem Mutate , a sum of 20 guineas, and to Miss Kent for recasting design for 15 guineas’ ( Sydney Mail 2 August 1879, 188).

Begg and William Macleod were the only professional cartoonist-illustrators employed on the first issue of the Bulletin , along with the steel engraver Saddler ('Old Sadd’) who resigned after the first issue. (“You deserve that a blackfellow should engrave for you with a waddy” was his parting comment, according to Rolfe, 44.) Then Macleod and Begg’s cartoons (1880-83) were mostly cut by the prolific Sydney firm of wood engravers, Mason Brothers . In the first issue of the Bulletin (31 January 1880) Begg illustrated 'A Heavy Wet’, two columns of heavy satire on a visiting evangelist who practised energetic total immersion (Lawson, 74). As Dart points out, his cartoons clearly related to the popular Aly Sloper series in London’s Judy being drawn by C.H. Rose in 1880. ( Phil May 's early cartoons, along with many others, show the same influence.)

Dart found only three sets of signed cartoons and one architectural drawing by Begg in the Bulletin : (1) 'Warden’ series, e.g. 'A nice way to treat a lady, I must say’, 31 January 1880, 3; (2) 'Free Trade’, a fop stealing cakes from the tray of a baker’s boy, 2 October 1880, 4; (3.) 'Protection required for Native Industry’, a baby Aboriginal boy pulling a face at a dog, 2 October 1880, 4. Lawson (78) thinks Sam Begg was probably the unnamed artist who illustrated Archibald’s lengthy article on the hanging of the Wantabadgery murderers, drawing the scaffold, Scott and Rogan about to be hanged, the sheriff and the executioner from life after McLeod had reputedly panicked at the prospect (Lawson, 78).

After studying at the National Gallery (Victoria) Design School at Melbourne in 1881-82, Begg returned to London in 1883 and joined the Illustrated London News . A sheet of his Sketches in Australia [sic]: Maori civilization was published in the ILN on 2 October 1886 (wood engraving, NLA NK4182/251). He remained with the paper for at least 17 years, described as 'an illustrator of public functions and events’ (Greenwall, p.107). Greenwall (p.19) illustrates his full-page 'The Making of The Illustrated London News: How the Paper is Produced Each Week of 2 September 1911, which shows 12 men in a room mostly drawing or seated at an easel with Begg himself in the left foreground seated at a table apparently elaborating on an image in a sketchbook on his la

From 1896 to 1913 Begg drew illustrations of the Boer War . Most consisted of members of the Royal family visiting troops in hospital or receiving news from the Front. On 19 May 1900, his black and white painting The Queen listening to a despatch from the Front was donated to the National Bazaar for War Funds. When its illustration appeared in the ILN on 17 March 1900, the publication of 1,000 signed photogravures was announced.

Begg also worked for Black and White in 1895-96, and Dart says he contributed to the Pictorial World . He was still in England in 1919, according to Dart – the year given as his death date by the NLA. Houfe thought he represented 'the worst of the late nineteenth-century illustrators’.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007