Design and Art Australia Online

painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born in Birmingham, England. He studied at the Birmingham School of Art and was already an experienced etcher when he arrived in Sydney in 1881 and was appointed a staff artist on the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia. Originals include Wet evening, George Street, Sydney 1889, charcoal & white (Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased 1898) and evidently The Argyle Cut, Sydney 1885, watercolour and bodycolour (Deutscher-Menzies Sydney auction 5 March 2002, lot 126, est. $6,000-8,000). He also contributed drawings to the Town and Country Journal (possible example with 'HF’ monogram is Our canoe upon the Lachlan, 7 February 1885, 287) and to the Bulletin, where he signed his cartoons 'Remus’, e.g. “Why Sir the climate’s so bracing you don’t even have to wear a belt” (old salt with suited gent at beach), pen and ink original, Josef Lebovic collectors’ list 1996 no.58 ('On the Beach’), cat.5.

Fullwood helped establish the NSW Society of Artists in the mid 1890s. Also a prolific painter, his oil paintings include Bad News from Town 1894, which was exhibited with the Art Society of NSW in 1894 under this title but called Sad News when illustrated by Deutscher-Menzies, Australian and International Pantings, Sculpture and Works on Paper, Melbourne 22 November 1998, lot 289 (it is not actually a war painting, as catalogued by Deutscher in 1985 and in subsequent references).

In 1896 Fullwood married Clyda Blanche Newman, daughter of photographer John Hubert Newman.

Fullwood returned to England around 1899/1900. He worked in the USA in 1900 but was in London when his friend 'Hop’ visited in 1903. His watercolour London (Deutscher-Menzies Sydney auction 5 March 2002, lot 180, est. $2,500-3,500) is dated 1909. He exhibited with the Salon des Artistes Françaises, at the RA and in the USA. Works shown at the Royal Academy included three paintings of South African interest: Table Bay, South Africa, during the Boer War, 1900 (1901), The Castle, Cape Town (1904) and Cape Town from the Malay Quarter (1904). Boer War subjects for the London Graphic consisted of four illustrations published December 1899 (and one of 10 March 1900) depicting Australian troops leaving Sydney (or Melbourne?) for South Africa. Greenwall owns a painting by Sydney Prior Hall with a label on the back stating that it was presented to [or by?] 'Fellow artist Fullwood at the Graphic on his marriage to Miss Donaldson’.

In 1920 Fullwood returned to Sydney. In April 1926 Home reported that his hair 'looked more startled than usual’ at a Water Color Institute opening. Bathing Beauties, a gouache and bodycolour view of women surfing with a pier ending in a lighthouse behind them (offered Deutscher-Menzies, Australian and International Paintings, Sculpture and Works on Paper, Melbourne 25-26 April 1999, lot 142), is likely to have been done in NSW, but he must have been back in London before 1929 when Dorothy Hopkins published her biography of her father; she noted Fullwood’s popularity in London, where he was universally known as 'Old Remus’.

Fullwood is credited with making the largest block engraved for reproduction in Australia, according to Greenwall, a panorama of Sydney measuring 90 × 60 cm, then in the Sydney Morning Herald library. He was also well known as a postcard artist. He died in New South Wales on 1 October 1930.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007