Design and Art Australia Online

Hesling, from a Yorkshire family, was born in Wales and two years later his father died and the family moved back to Yorkshire, where they settled. He started painting as a 'primitive’ in the style of Douanier Rousseau after meeting Léger, Vlaminck, Marie Laurencin et al. when working in Paris as a house painter and marbler but his work soon became more sophisticated. He migrated to Sydney in 1928 and exhibited his abstract paintings the following year.

He returned to London at the start of the Depression, took some odd jobs, married Flo’ (Florence) in 1933 and returned to Australia. From 1933 to 1938 he was an advertising director at Elstree Studios, Sydney. During the war he worked at Slazengers designing ships for the navy, drawing daily cartoons for editor Brian Penton at The Daily Telegraph in his spare time.

He notes in his autobiography (The Dinkum Pommie 1964, 177-8) that it was difficult to get them to the paper before the jokes dated: 'I would shove my drawings on Brian Penton’s desk at midnight or 7 a.m. and sometimes even my wife took them in for me’. When transferred to the Ministry of Munitions, however, he was far closer; the building was in the same street as the Telegraph. Examples of his Telegraph naive outline-style cartoons on postwar food shortages and manpower control in 1945 are illustrated in Coleman & Tanner (pp130-31) and in Hesling’s Cartoons (Consolidated Press Limited, Sydney, 1945, 96pp).

Hesling also drew political cartoons, and said of them:
“Had I stuck to comic sketches of American servicemen buying tickets for Il Trovatore on the black market and such like, all would have been well. But my drawing had improved so much by now that I could get passable likenesses of Eddie Ward and Mr. Curtin. Brian saw me as one of those political bores – the scorched-earth boys who draw Russian bears and rising suns using soot instead of ink. What he didn’t like about me, of course, was having to write letters about art to pedantic readers who objected to a Prime Minister with six fingers on the hand instead of five.”

At the Ministry Hesling worked with George Molnar , whom he claims he prodded into becoming a cartoonist (pp.182-6) and who gave him lessons in drawing in return. He left the Ministry to work full-time on The Daily Telegraph and was sent to Canberra (p.187) – which he hated. Sacked from the Telegraph , he moved to The Sydney Morning Herald , then to Smith’s Weekly to replace John Quinn (who moved to Woman’s Day in 1947) where he remained for four years until it closed (in 1950).

He also contributed occasional whimsical cartoons and articles to Australia: National Journal , eg. May 1947, and to Australia : Week-end Book . Vol.2 (1943) of the latter has seven cartoons, eg. couple looking at nudes, satyrs and pirates on beach and saying, “Aren’t those the people we met at Mr. Lindsay’s?” Vol.3 (1944) has 10 cartoons, eg rose plant growing hands, “We think it’s a Salvador Dali”. Vol.4 (1945) features only two works by Hesling. Another wartime book he illustrated with simple, whimsical, line drawings was These Beastly Australians (Australasian Publishing Company, Sydney, n.d.), short, light verse by Leon Gellert about various Australian animals. References to wartime and Macarthur make it clear it’s wartime.

Out of work in 1950, Hesling did a few recorded talks for the BBC at 30/- a time (p.197) and wrote a well-reviewed book, which still earned him less than £100. He wrote freelance articles for the SMH at about 8 quid per 1000 words, 'and, of course, I did joke drawings. There’s a terrific market for these; I remember once Man paying me three guineas for a whole page of them, one of which I later sold to the New Yorker (as an idea) for $40.’ He also drew cartoons for Meanjin , Quadrant , Nation , the Manchester Guardian and the Listener (London). He wrote art criticism for the Sydney Observer until Donald Horne sacked him for reviewing an exhibition he hadn’t seen; his replacement was Robert Hughes (Humphrey McQueen, 'Rolling Column’, ABR 109, April 1989).

Hesling painted numerous murals from 1950 to 1955 in NSW, Victoria, SA and North Queensland (Emerald) and 'decorated his merry writings with his own curious humorous drawings’ (Blaikie, 132). Among his clients were Qantas, Marcus Clark store, ES&A bank, Ambassador Restaurant. But he will be best remembered for his vitreous enamel painting. He exhibited his work in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide and Europe.

At an exhibition of his enamels at Underwood Galleries in Sydney in 1965 he said: 'I have expressed myself in many different ways in order to prove the validity and versatility of vitreous enamel as a painting medium. Painting in enamel is no harder than painting in oils – merely different. Its great advantage as a medium lies in its suitability for exterior mural work and in its durability at all temperatures. It has been suggested that enamel as an art form cannot be entirely controlled. This is nonsense as a glance at the portrait work of any one of the famous enamellers will show.’(SMH 14 Nov 1965 p97)

His first book, an illustrated account of Sydney, Sydney Observed (1953), was described as a book of 'gentle mockery and wry delight’ in SMH 14 Nov 1953 p8. It was followed by several humorous illustrated autobiographies:
• Little and Orphan (1954, repub 1967), which (Prof) A D Hope said 'tapped a vein of pure and natural comedy…It is one of the most engaging books I have read for a long time’ in SMH 29 Jan 1955 p11;
• The Dinkumization and Depommification of an Artful English Immigrant (1963)(repub. as The Dinkum Pommie (1964)), which Clement Semmler said contained 'the essence of Mr Hesling’s philosophy and observation of his adopted country and countrymen: “Today nobody starves (nobody white). This being so, anyone can paint, write poems or play the fiddle just for the hell of it…”’;
• Stir Up This Stew (1966), praised by Olaf Ruhen in SMH 11 June 1966;
• I Left My Tears in the Fridge (1972), praised by Clement Semmler:'the Hesling comic vision is based on shrewd observation’. (SMH 9 Sept 1972 p22);
• Around the World on an Old Age Pension (1974)(which includes My Picture Book)praised by Clement Semmler in SMH 11 May 1974 p13; and
• Art Ruined My Career in Crime (1977).

Helped by an actor friend who had won the Opera House Lottery, Hesling, with a cast of actors, performed his play My Life, with an Interval for Asperin (sic) in Sydney in 1965 (The Australian Women’s Weekly 20 Oct 1965 p12). In the 1970s, in Adelaide, Canberra etc, it was a one-man stage performance, as was his Bear with Hesling or My Life and Art Times (1977).

Bernard and Flo’ left their longtime home at The Redoubt, Castlecrag, Sydney, in 1962 and moved to North Adelaide. He was attracted by the Adelaide Festival and easy access to facilities for firing his vitreous enamel paintings on steel plates. In Adelaide he began a long association with Greenhill Galleries.

In 1969 he recorded with Hazel de Berg an entertaining account of his life and family, his varied career and his vitreous enamelling: “I’ve never been very interested in art – I’m interested in me painting – it’s the sort of thing everybody should do” etc.(Hazel de Berg Collection, sound recording, Oral TRC 1/368-370 National Library of Australia)

An SMH article “Art: the way out of an orphanage’ in 1971 said that Hesling has often been described as the first man to introduce vitreous enamel work to Australia but he prefers to be known as the man who fostered it here. “There is more vitreous enamel work done by me and my school in Adelaide than in the whole world.” (SMH 23 May 1971 p130)

Hesling was awarded an OAM in June 1985 for his service to the arts. The Advertiser (17 June 1985, p2) noted the award and described Bernard’s varied life in its Monday Profile article “A colorful 80 years, and still making his mark”. Chris Butler’s article “Bernard Hesling: A self-confessed amateur nut-case” The Adelaide Review Dec 1984/Jan 1985, was a one-page biography.

He died aged 82 on 13 June 1987. His wife Flo’ died on 21 May 1970. There were no children. An obituary by Tim Lloyd “Hesling: a versatile, lively life” was published in The Advertiser of 16 June 1987 p.17.

Years later, in 1999, Greenhill Galleries offered his 'long lost’ 1969 set of four 'Australia Day’ enamel panels for sale at $100,000 (The Advertiser 2 Oct 1999 p60).

Examples of his art are held in the Art Gallery of WA, Hamilton Art Gallery, Mitchell Library in Sydney, National Gallery of Australia and State Gallery of SA.

See also entry on Bernard Hesling on the Obituaries Australia website: http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/hesling-bernard-14599

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2012