Design and Art Australia Online

George Alexander Needham (1903-1985). Also known as George Robb (pseudonym).

George Alexander Needham was born in London, England, on 3 May 1903. He emigrated to Australia in 1915. At the age of twenty-one he married Ada Mary Needham, and had two children, Mary and John Christopher (d. 1976). There was a divorce and George brought the children to Sydney, New South Wales. They lived with him during their schooling, and later returned to their mother.

In 1946 Needham married Elmer Noeline Roberts (b.1922) in Sydney. They had one daughter, Penelope. They lived in East Roseville (a Sydney suburb, later named Roseville Chase). Needham died in Sydney on 29 January 1985, aged eighty-one.

Needham studied at the Prahran Technical College in Melbourne, Victoria, and got a job at the Art Department of Union Theatres in Melbourne. In 1923 he was Head Artist for Victory Publicity. In the late 1920s, he created the comic 'The Dwight Family’ for the magazine Table Talk Magazine (Melbourne). In the 1930s he drew cartoons for the first Melbourne Age newspaper.

In the 1930s Needham also made illustrations and paintings, which were exhibited in a one-man show at Margaret McLean’s Gallery in Melbourne in 1938. That same year he moved to Sydney. During World War II, he made propaganda art. After the War, he created the black-and-white comic series 'The Bosun and Choclit’ using the pseudonym George Robb. This comic series ran until the late 1950s.

Writers:

Rost, Fred

Date written:

2009

Last updated:

2011