Design and Art Australia Online

painter, illustrator, writer and mathematics teacher; arrived from England in January 1885, aged 22. Described by J.F. Bruce as being '6’ 3” high, aesthetic, virile, uniting the Cambridge manner with the Bohemian Spirit (with) a picturesque and paradoxical personality’. Young drew for Lone Hand (including the cover of 2 March 1908 featuring an Aboriginal woman), designed posters, painted watercolours, wrote many articles and two short plays, designed ladies’ gowns and programmes for musical evenings in Toorak and was a teacher of musketry during WWI. Ure Smith (quoted Caban p.55), along with many others, praised his poster work, influenced by the English Beggarstaff Brothers (a.k.a. Pryde & Nicholson). He also illustrated Helen E. Wallace’s Magic Casements (Melbourne, 1925) with three colour plates.

His writings include the article “Fremiet’s 'Gorilla and Woman’”, Lone Hand 1 (June 1907), 226-29. (see Fink monograph).

Young also did the very atmospheric Convict Prison [the old Hobart Gaol] , watercolour and gouache on paper n.d., which includes the prison chaplain Rev. Robert Knopwood on his white horse, Timor, in front of the building along with some Aborigines and a red-coated soldier on guard in front of his sentry box. Apparently it belongs to the historical subjects, like Buckley and Fawkner, he painted between 1901 and 1905.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007