Design and Art Australia Online

painter, scene-painter, silhouette artist, illustrator, cartoonist and poster artist, signed his work 'Stuart Allan’ or 'J.S. Allan’. In the late 1890s Stuart Allan published two booklets in Sydney, As Green as Grass and Our Boys and the Transvaal . He illustrated a souvenir program for a production of Macbeth at Her Majesty’s Theatre and contributed to the Commonwealth Journal (1901 03) and Rowlandson’s Success 1 & 2 (1907 08). He also did posters from the early 1900s, including popular 'cab designs’ for Mark Foys department store printed in four colours. The NLA has neg. of Fancy Meeting You! from the Comic Australian , 18 November 1911 (see file), while the SLNSW has an original ink cartoon of a horse and rider (DL PX 71). Other works include a set of six postcards of comic horse riding incidents based on pen and ink sketches, a World War I postcard dated 11 November 1918 (discussed Cook, 103) and the cover of Amazing America by H.M. Somer (Sydney 1923). Horse-riding was also the subject of his cartoon done for Town and Country Journal , 'The Tod Sloan Seat’, 31 July 1907, 27.

J.S. Allan was a casual contributor to the Bulletin at the turn of the century, eg silly housewives joke 21 October 1899; A Short Memory (forgotten war wounded kangaroo) 16 March 1901; and The Coming Costume (silhouettes of five females re Manly Council resolution that women must wear bathing costumes made of dark material) 13 December 1906 (see file). Other silhouettes include On a breezy day for Lone Hand May 1907, 81 (see also 'The Art of the Silhouette’ January 1908, pp.312-15). J.S. Allan drew white arrival cartoons for The Wellington Jubilee – presumably a NZ comic history – in 1900 (ill. Grant 16-17), some like Punch others silhouette-like but naïve.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007