Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist, illustrator and painter, was born at Ryde, Sydney on 22 May 1888, son of Walter Neville Gye, from London, and his second wife, Priscilla Theodosia née Warr. His father had been a builder before he moved to Black Range (Lavington) near Albury to prospect for gold. Hal was educated in the local bush school until he was 12 and the family moved to Melbourne. He worked in a city architect’s office for about two years then became a law clerk. While in the latter job his first verse was published in the Bulletin and he joined Alek Sass 's art class, a Melbourne bohemian group that met at the Mitre Hotel and at Fassoli’s. He also drew cartoons for Melbourne Punch . His undated postcard, The Suffragette , published in Melbourne by 'S.H.J.’, shows a head of a woman with brooms illustrating the verse: 'Men work from morn to set of sun,/ BUT WOMAN’S WORK IS NEVER DONE’.

Gye left the law firm to make a living from drawing. As the cartoonist for C.J. Dennis’s Gadfly (Adelaide) in 1906-7 he shared a Melbourne studio with David Low [ ADB says he shared a Collins Street studio with Low during WWI]. Meeting Dennis in Melbourne led to Gye being commissioned to do decorations for The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915) – his best-known work. Similar cupid 'Push’ figures were employed for Dennis’s The Glugs of Gosh (1917), which was also published inSydney by A&R.

The cartoons Gye contributed to the Comic Australian (1911-13) are very art-nouveau and Souterish in style, acc. Lindesay ( WWW , 83), e.g. one re a trade union for the theatre, 6 January 1912, 11, and The Man for the Job 3 February 1912, 8. From 1910 he contributed political cartoons, illustrated jokes and pars for the Bulletin , e.g. Going to an Evening Party in Berlin 25 February 1915, 30. When Will Dyson went to London Gye inherited the theatrical caricatures too. 277 of his original caricatures dated 1913-34 are in the ML Bulletin collection, including portraits of artists Charles Web Gilbert (nos 112 and 190), Bernard Hall, Frederick McCubbin, J.S. Macdonald, Matthew James McNally, John Mather, Paul Montford, John D. Moore, H.S. Power and Blamire Young. On 15 November 1916, at Flemington, Gye married Alice Clara Gifford, one of the famous J.C. Williamson front-row chorus girls.

Gye contributed to Melbourne Punch in 1924-25 (1925 examples ill. Lindesay 1979). He also contributed cartoons to the Herald , Weekly Times , the Weekly Times Annual , the Sporting Globe and Table Talk (Melbourne), Arrow , Referee and Smith’s Weekly (Sydney) and did decorative pieces for Lone Hand . He worked on the Sydney Daily Telegraph and was the first cartoonist employed by the Adelaide News (ill. Stone 1973, 44). He also painted. In the 1920s Gye sold 'hundreds of oils’ and held exhibitions of his paintings and a show of monotypes. Mounted oil versions of his drawings for The Glugs of Gosh are in the SLSA.

From c.1937 Gye concentrated on writing short stories in the Bulletin as 'James Hackston’, including 'Father’ and 'Jules’. They were later collected and illustrated by 'Hal Gye’. A collection of purportedly autobiographical stories about 'James Hackston’s’ early years in the Australian outback was published as Father Clears Out (Sydney, 1966) 'illustrated Hal Gye’. He wrote verse as 'Hacko’ in the 1940s and 1950s and designed costumes for a ballet based on The Sentimental Bloke in 1952.

Gye died at Beaumaris [elsewhere Eltham] on 25 November 1967, survived by his son ( ADB ).

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2011