Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist and illustrator, was working as a commercial artist in Sydney in the early 1920s. The caption to a youthful photograph of her, taken by the leading Sydney photographer Judith Fletcher and published in Home in December 1921, reads: 'Some day she is going to paint Australia’s masterpiece; in the meantime she helps old teacher Albert Collins design fascinating catalogues and magazine covers. She is another who was born in the backblocks, but makes shift with the surf at Bondi and a jazz party or two.’

As well as working for Home and doing commercial art for the firm of Smith & Julius (like Bertha Sloane, Mabel Leith (q.v.) etc.), Panton did illustrations for the more downmarket Aussie magazine. They appeared in a section called 'The Aussie Woman’, noted as being written by women and 'devoted to things about Women that should be known by Men, and things about Men that should be known by Women’. 'The Romance of Wispy Lingerie’ by 'Eve’s Daughter’ (15 March 1921), which asserted that 'a camisole itself is like a woman – it tantalises and attracts, and coyly hides away, revealing just that subtle sufficiency which makes for perennial charm’, had four illustrations by Panton, including a 'little flapper’ wearing a lavishly embroidered petticoat, the sole outlet for her 'unconscious surgings’. Similarly titillating articles by 'Eve’s Daughter’ illustrated by Panton include 'For a Corner in the Starlight When the Jazzing Steps Are Slow’ (15 December 1920), which has a stylish illustration captioned 'Some frocks – evening gowns especially – are the creation of artists in fabric, and the result is no less splendid than the picture painted on canvas.’ Other illustrations were provided for 'Toilets De-Mer – and Colourful Accessories’ (15 January 1921), on beach outfits, and 'Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, How Do Your Dresses Grow?’ (15 October 1920) Fashion was a perennial topic.

Women’s Right to Smoke Pipes and Cigarettes (illustration inscribed lower left 'V.C.P.’), Aussie 14 January 1922, 37, opens with an attack on those who are old – Yesterday who is always preaching at Today – who tell 'Eve’s Daughter’

something about tobacco being the Tomb of Love, and hint that I shall lose the looks I have and the husband I haven’t, if I will persist in my wicked ways…But if it is the cigarette which is causing all the trouble, why, we’ll take to pipes. They will give ever much more scope for individual design than do the attenuated holders for cigs…but women’s fancy need not stop at man’s inventions. She can devise anything she likes so long as she will smoke it.

The creative possibilities are extended in Panton’s image. Two flappers hold cigarette holders embellished with a mirror, powder puff and lipstick; the embroiderer’s pipe has thread, scissors and pins attached; the dowager’s takes the form of a lorgnette, the gardener’s of a flower, and so on. Her figures also refer to a Shakespearian parody in the article, 'the Seven Ages of Smoking’. Ignoring the infant with her liquorice pipe and the schoolgirl with her 'surreptitious cheroot’, Panton focuses on the following ages:

... And then the flapper,

With curly hair and bella-donna-ed eyes,

Oft sparkling with strangeness. Full of queer words,

She flicks her fag,

Even in the eyes of wowsers. And the flapper

With hair that curls less easily,

In second flapperdom and oblivion,

And eyes that are wrinkled.

Yet still the ash drops slowly from

Fingers turning yellow. The sixth age still

Sees the flapper, grown older,

When hair is dyed to vie with youth,

And blase cynicisms issue from pale red lips,

Between the puffs of smoke. Last scene of all

That ends this strange, eventful history,

With cigarette on cocktail on cigarette.

Lifelong smoking by 'that idealised paragon of perfected charm in womanhood – the French woman, and more particularly the Parisienne’ – is considered part of her attraction and keeps her youthful looking, says 'Eve’s Daughter’. Panton’s smokers, however, are not ageless French charmers but urban white Australians who are self-conscious would-be sophisticates, silly suburbanites or tough old battle-axes. The rather literal, local character of Panton’s drawings undermines the pseudo-sophistication of the text.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

1992