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cartoonist, was born on 8 May 1869 in the copper-mining town of Moonta, South Australia. He began his working life in the mines (as Oswald Pryor was to do later), then served before the mast before becoming a printer and learning all aspects of newspaper work (Moore, ii, 122). By 1891 he was a proficient (self-taught) black-and-white artist contributing to the Bulletin e.g. 'Woman’s Suffrage!’/ 'No.1: “Are you going to vote for Mr. Blank today, Miss Butterfly?”/ No.2 “Indeed, I am not: he is not my ideal of a member of parliament. I went to hear him speak the other night, and do you know, he’s quite bald”’ 1891. In 1898 [1897 acc. Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB)] he succeeded J.H. Chinner as chief cartoonist on the Adelaide comic paper Quiz. He also worked on the Adelaide Sporting Life and had cartoons accepted by the Sydney Bulletin before moving to Melbourne in 1902. In 1903 he submitted a cartoon on the Victorian rail strike to Tocsin, a radical Labor newspaper loaded with debts and libels, edited by Frank Anstey who also edited/ owned Labor Call and many other papers (see ADB vol.7). Marquet worked for Tocsin until September 1903, when he was fired. His farewell cartoon was: “The Tocsin” artist was here fired out into the night for sketching Mrs Fatman from the semi-nude! frontispiece 10 September 1903 (ill. Senyard?): a Tocsin photogravure is in Mitchell Library [ML].

From 1904 to 1906 Marquet reverted to running a printing workshop; there is some speculation that he was responsible for the Melbourne printing union’s 1904 Xmas card which shows a comical printing works and printer, possibly a self portrait (Lilley collection, ML drawer 19). He contributed cartoons to Table Talk (1903-4) and Melbourne Punch, signing some 'CM’ or 'QUET’ (later signatures were 'Claude’ and 'C.A.M.’). From about 1910 to 1920 he contributed to Tocsin's successor Labor Call (1910-11, 1915-16, 1918, 1920 ill. Senyard), apparently as an occasional contributor. He was invited to Sydney to be staff cartoonist on the Australian Worker in 1906 and drew for it from 25 October 1906 until his death (lots of slides 1913-1919 in Sydney University Slide Library), e.g. King Coal 1909 (original Dixson Galleries). A portrait of Mawson in ice with penguins in his head, dated 12 March 1914, labelled 'X-ray Portraits – No.18’ was evidently done for the Worker too.

Marquet was a major contributor to Norman Lilley’s short-lived, sixpenny Lilley’s Magazine (1911) – 'the literary lamp-post of “The Worker”’, the Sydney Sportsman called it – as well as to Lilley’s earlier penny paper, Vumps (January 1908), which Ryan says (148) was the first Australian comic-paper for boys. It lasted one issue (ML). {ADB says it was a failed comic paper experiment by the Worker.} He drew covers for both papers as well as many of the cartoons inside (originals in drawer 19, ML). His comic strip Borrowed Plumes on the back page of Vumps about two 'Domain-dossers’, Marmyduke Miffles and Snoofter McSnickle, reminiscent of the English tramps Weary Willy and Tired Tim, was set during the much publicised visit of the American Fleet to Sydney (ill. Ryan). It led to a similar strip by D.H. Souter about two Domain tramps on the cover of the Sunday Sun's children’s supplement of 20 November 1921 – Australia’s first comic supplement – but its references to alcohol and crime so offended 'Sunbeams’ editor Ethel Turner that she threatened to resign unless it was withdrawn. Five weeks after the supplement began, the strip was replaced by Us Fellas, later Ginger Meggs, drawn by J.C. Bancks. Turner wrote in her diaries that she did not like the ’12 pictures appearing on our front page, despite the fact that they were drawn by one of our cleverest and most successful draughtsmen’: see Philippa Poole (ed.), The Diaries of Ethel Turner, Sydney, Lansdowne Press, 1978 paperback edn 1998, pp.332. However, Lindsay Foyle, who is writing a book on Meggs, says the whole story is untrue.

Marquet also drew for another Worker publication, Our Annual. By 1919 he was doing up to four detailed cartoons a week for the Worker and many of his powerful anti-conscription and anti-war cartoons appeared there: The Greater Patriot of 1916 depicts a woman mourning at the grave of the Gallipoli dead beside a fat capitalist carrying 'Interest on War Loans’ in a bag (ill. King, 104). Similar anti-war imagery can be seen in Patriotism should begin at home, an allegorical Australia sitting at Captain Cook’s landing place (National Library of Australia has neg.); The “Case” for Labor 1916, and I’ll Have You of 1917 where Billy Hughes appears as a rabid Kitchener parody (ill. King, 106). Lots of Marquet’s Worker cartoons attacked Hughes, e.g. The Expulsion/ 'Hughes: “This is an outrage! I created it, and I claim the right to destroy it!”’-'it’ being Australian Democracy, a female on a plinth, being attacked by Hughes with a 'Conscription’ bomb but being foiled by Labor’s 'No Conscription’ boot (from the anti-conscription leaflet, Hughes’ Expulsion, ML, ill. Harris, 236). A leaflet shows Hughes in a CSR sugar-bag (Harris, 292, presumably ML), and others include: EVERYBODY’S DOING IT/ 'Registrar: “What can I do for you, my little man?”/ Hughes: “These darn profiteers! They’re exploiting me. I haven’t the heart to shoot 'em; but I’ll settle 'em! I’LL COPYRIGHT MY FEATURES!” (NLA neg. prob. from the Worker); caricature of Hughes captioned 'In these topsy-turvy times, with the right publicity agent, even the character of the late Daniel Quilp might have been saved’.

Other anti-conscription cartoons include a Worker one signed 'Claude Marquet, 12 Fletcher Street Bondi N.S.W.’ (Harris, 241). “NO for ME, Daddy!” drawn for the Bulletin in 1915 (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 126) gives the city address, 'St Andrews Place, Sydney'. His most famous, The Blood Vote, was said to have played a significant part in defeating conscription at the ballot box. Published by the Worker as a broadsheet on 12 October 1916 (reputedly as a million leaflets: see ADB), it carried an anti-conscription verse signed by William Robert Winspear (1859-1944), coalminer, socialist and journalist – see ADB vol.12, article by Verity Burgmann, which states that the poem was actually by E.J. Dempsey, a leader writer on the pro-conscription Evening News who had asked Winspear to sign it. {ML’s annotated copy denies this.} Marquet illustrates the poem with a woman deciding whether she will 'condemn a man to death’ or vote 'no’ (Sydney: The Worker Print, n.d. [1916]), ML A3095 (ill. Harris, 239).

Like many of the Left, Marquet continued his opposition to the war even after the conscription vote was lost. Josef Lebovic 1997, list 62A, cat.42, had The Spoils are Heavy, a framed 1919 pen and ink original, 37.3 × 30.8 cm, for sale at $890, captioned 'Australian Wage-Earner: '“They may say I’m ungrateful, but, somehow, I can’t get enthusiastic over this 'victory’ celebration”.’ (Was it another Worker cartoon?) He worked on People (Sydney) in 1918 when it was owned by the Socialist Labor Party of Australia (Gibbney). Marquet was at the height of his career when he was drowned on 17 April 1920 returning home to Kurnell from Botany in a sailing boat. Harris (264) states:

“Claude Marquet, the famous labor cartoonist, who died tragically in a boating accident [in 1920], tried to picture the problem faced by the Labor Party in the 1917-22 period, when attempts were made to link the Party with the worst developments of the postwar, post-Revolution era.”

The Worker issued an anthology of his cartoons as a tribute, Cartoons by Claude Marquet: A commemorative volume with appreciations by leading representatives of literature and politics (Sydney: The Worker, 1920). According to Lindesay in ADB, there are 75 original Worker cartoons by Marquet in ML.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007