cartoonist, was born in Bellefontaine, Logan County, Ohio, USA, second youngest of a family of 14 (acc. to Hop, 'His Confessions’). His father died in 1849, when Hop was three, leaving his widow with nine surviving children. Hop fought in the American Civil War, having enlisted at the age of 17 as a private soldier (Union side) for the few months that remained. Taylor writes: 'at the outbreak of the American war in the sixties, evidently thinking the sword was mightier than the pen, he enlisted and went through the campaign without doing any particular damage, and to-day is proud to state that he is about the only survivor that does not happen to be a colonel!’ (Taylor p.34, referring to Hop 'His confessions’).
Hop began to be interested in making cartoons for a living in the early 1870s and 'left a country newspaper office “out west”, where I was very happy and decently paid as “local” editor and general utility man, to accept an offer made by the conductor of a new magazine to be called Scribner’s Monthly (the name was afterwards changed to The Century )’ in New York (Hop, 'His Confessions’, 1 December 1913, 21). His first drawing, which he engraved himself, Under the Gaslight , appeared in a small Illinois newspaper (the one 'out west’ [evidently in 1870]); it is reproduced in 'Hop, His Confessions’, Lone Hand 1 December 1913, 21. He worked for the Toledo Blade (Toledo was where he finished his education) as with Thomas Nast an illustrator of satirical 'literatoor’ written by 'Petroleum V. Nasby’ (David R. Locke). While at Scribner’s (October 1870) he took drawing classes under Aug. Will two nights a week, working in the business department of Scribner’s during the day for 12 dollars a week. This being a somewhat low salary, he decided to contribute to other magazines, so left Scribner’s and set up his own freelance studio at 116 Nassau Street, up three flights of stairs, also ceasing drawing classes. At about this time he stopped signing his full name and used 'Hop’.
He contributed freelance commercial art drawings and cartoons to a wide variety of journals, including Wild Oats , Judge , New York Daily Graphic , various Harper’s magazines – Harper’s Weekly, Harper’s Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and Harper’s Young People – and many others. In 1876, for the American Centenary, he wrote and illustrated The Comic History of the United States, by Livingston Hopkins, with seventy-five illustrations from sketches taken at a safe distance by the Author (New York: George Carleton, 1876), 'which I seriously wish mine enemy had written’, he stated in 1914 (Hop, 'His confessions’, Lone Hand 1 April 1914, 325). It was widely criticised for not being respectful enough, although when it was reprinted a year or two later by an English firm based in New York (Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.) it sold and reviewed better. Hop in 'His Confessions’ put this down to a cooling of nationalistic fervour after the centenary ( Lone Hand 2 March 1914, 246, chap XXVII 'Native Americans’ 1 April 1914, 325-26).
Hop had also regularly contributed to St Nicholas , an offshoot of Scribner’s for children. A serial, 'The Countess and the cat’ by T. Bailey Aldrich, which he illustrated with silhouette drawings, was later brought out in book form. In 1873 he illustrated an annual satirical magazine by the renowned humorist 'Josh Billings’ (Henry W. Shaw), Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax (New York: George Carleton, 1873) – about the third in the series – and continued this work until 1879. His illustrations dominate the bound version of nine Allminaxes and he illustrated a book of humorous essays by Robert Burdette for the same publisher.
Other books Hop illustrated include Don Quixote, Gulliver’s Travels, Baron Munchausen and Irving’s Knickerbocker History of New York . While working on a space-rate basis for the Daily Graphic Hop, aged 37, was induced to join the Bulletin by W.H. Traill in November 1882 (he gives a detailed and amusing account of this in 'His confessions’, Lone Hand 1 May 1914, 396). After Keller of the San Francisco Wasp had agreed but backed out at the last minute, Traill went to NY and interviewed Wales of the Judge , Opper of Puck and Hamilton Birch of the New Century . The last sent him to Hop, still a fairly new arrival at the Daily Graphic .
A month later Hop and his family began the train trip cross-country to catch the S.S. Australia to Sydney, reaching San Francisco on Friday evening, 9 February 1883. The last thing he had done before leaving New York was to illustrate A Model Primer by Eugene Field. As well as Hop, his wife Harriet Augusta, the daughter of General Commager of Toledo, Ohio, whom he’d married seven years earlier, and their three small daughters, Traill got him to bring out Australia’s first photo-engraving equipment, which allowed drawings to be photographed and transferred onto metal plates for printing thus making topical daily cartoons a possibility. After less than successful initial experiments with the technology, Hop’s suggestion that the Bulletin engage an expert – from New York as it happened – was heeded (Hop, 'His Confessions’, 1 May 1914, 436-7).
The family found temporary accommodation in Sydney near the top of William Street. Traill gave Hop a tour of the city, introduced him to the Colonial Treasurer George Dibbs and pointed out other local identities as potential subjects for caricature. Unimpressed by his initial view of the Bulletin offices ('His Confessions’ 1 May 1914, p.436), Hop was soon provided with a new studio in Bond Street. Later on he shared a studio for a few months with Phil May , another Traill acquisition engaged in 1885. Hop notes that they both simplified their drawings in order to cope with the limited technical capabilities of the Bulletin 's machinery. Hop had a relatively advanced knowledge of printing processes and was often frustrated by the Bulletin 's primitive equipment and techniques (Caban, 32). He describes his method of working and talks about cartoons and caricatures in general in 'His Confessions’ ( Lone Hand 1 June 1914, 16-20).
After May left in 1887, Hop became the chief Sydney Bulletin cartoonist for decades. George Rossi Ashton was engaged for Victoria and Norman Lindsay contributed many cartoons in Sydney until he finally took over the Sydney slot in 1913 when Hop retired. The subjects Hop made most famous were Henry Parkes – perhaps his favourite, according to his daughter Dorothy – Sir George ('Yes-No’) Reid, who claimed he added his monocle for Hop – and 'The Little Boy at Manly’, whose name derived from one on a subscription list of contributions to Boer War funds and whose appearance combined Millais’s 'Bubbles’ and an old-fashioned Tenniel child. He symbolised NSW according to Tanner and 'Young Australia’ according to Rolfe (46). Both were correct. George Taylor described how the character developed (p.36), and Hop also told the story in 'His Confessions’ ( Lone Hand 1 June 1914, 19).
The little boy stayed with the Bulletin for years and was used by other cartoonists as well. His first appearance was in The Roll Call , Hop’s parody of Lady Butler’s renowned painting of the same title done when the AGNSW briefly owned a replica by the artist (in the belief it was the original work). Hop’s original caption (ML V* CART 30) is The Roll Call, or The Contingent’s Return. After the Original by Miss Thompson recently purchased by the Government from Mr. John Sands . Other Hop cartoons with the little boy include The Yellow Trash Question 1895, with the lad perched on flotsam in the sea while a man of Asian ethnicity tries to climb aboard (ill. King, 69).
Initially employed on a two-year contract (acc. to Caban 1983, 32, it was three years), Hop stayed 30 years and did an estimated 19,000 drawings for the Bulletin . In 1900 he invented 'Hop’s Understudy’ – actually Hop in a hurry – to help with the weekly grind. Some colleagues claimed he never really understood the sort of paper he was working for, considered passages in the 'Red Page’ unfit for any young woman to read and thought some of Norman Lindsay’s work prurient. Lindsay didn’t like Hop much either, complaining that the substance of Hop’s being was that of 'a witch-hunting puritan’, like his ancestor Stephen Hopkins, and stating in 1950 that Hop refused to acknowledge his existence on the staff leading to Archibald introducing them over and over again (Rolfe, 46, from Lindsay in Jubilee issue 1950). Hop’s daughter, Hattie F. Hopkins, responded, claiming that her father was a far more complex figure than Lindsay depicted – moreover, he didn’t recognise his own daughters in the street either ( Bulletin , 1 March 1950, 35). Possibly because he was an American, Hop failed to see how his anti-British royal family cartoons could appear subversive (ill. Rolfe, Tanner & Coleman, King etc.). He may have been responsible for the Bulletin 's anti-suffrage and anti-feminist agenda, which is evident in his early US cartoons (see Hop scrapbooks).
Hop originals in ML include Henry Parkes in bed with his head tied up, published 11 February 1890: 'Federation in the 'Air is all very well, but when it gets into the 'ead, Oh Lor!’ (Px*D431/11). Also, a page of 'cartoonlets’ – topicalities that include Barton white-washing natives now that New Guinea has become part of Australia in order to preserve the White Australia policy and a giant rat labelled 'plague’ frightening the Little Boy at Manly (DG SV* CART 23). Some of his cartoons were reproduced by the Bulletin as postcards (see David Cook) and collections appeared as books.
Hop acquired shares and became a director of the Bulletin . He was friendly with a number of Bulletin men, playing bowls with William Macleod and going on trips to the country with Banjo Paterson. With Archibald he was a member of the Sydney Athenaeum Club, which he attended whenever he was in town – though the two men were never close. With Julian Ashton , he started an artists’ camp on land he partly owned and partly rented at Balmoral (attributed Dorothy Hopkins, p.126). Visitors to it included his friends A. H. Fullwood and Daplyn and (fleetingly) Robert Louis Stevenson. He and his wife had three more children in Australia, including two sons. (The younger son, Almon(?), went on the land and one of them helped Hop make the furniture for the Hopkins Mosman home.)
Hop called Australia 'the love of my life’ and refused a number of offers to work elsewhere but never became an Australian citizen. He made two trips to Europe and America – a world tour beginning with Japan in 1903, after severe illness had led to the need for a long rest, and another in 1913 after he retired. His wife died at the age of 40 and his daughters then looked after him and his home, 'Fernham’, in Raglan Street, Mosman (though he committed his daughter Dorothy to a lunatic asylum {Stephen Garton has written about her}). Both house and garden were equipped with trick objects, including a seat that screeched when sat on and a garden chair that squirted Norman Lindsay when he sat in it, as Lindsay recalled in Bohemians of the Bulletin. He therefore had a sense of humour of a sort – just not of the type Lindsay approved of.
In his retirement Hop continued to make etchings, violins and violoncellos. He had been making violins since his youthful American years and had taught etching in both his Jamieson Street studio and his Mosman home to numerous students, including Ashton, Tom Roberts , B.E. Minns and Arthur Streeton (Dorothy Hopkins, p.166). His most famous etching is probably I thought I had a stamp! 1898 (copies ML, NGA, etc., original drawing in AGNSW ), but there are many others including conventional landscapes and streetscapes, e.g. Governor Bouke Hotel 1886 (NGA). According to Caban (p. 33) this interest had waned by 1893 when he took up cello making, yet he kept an office in town until he died and continued to draw. In old age, when his eyesight was failing, he made clock cases (Dorothy Hopkins, 157). Two hours before he died at Fernham, late at night on 21 August 1927, he delivered a little dissertation on etching to his nurse to entertain her, according to Dorothy Hopkins (p.1). His last words were, 'Where have you lived all these years?’ when his attendant asked him if he was the man who had been the Bulletin artist.
EXHIBITIONS: At the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition the 'Sydney Bulletin’ exhibited, at the entrance to the NSW court (with other newspapers and institutions, eg the Picturesque Atlas), 'Original drawings by Phil. May and Hopkins’ (cat.58, p.492 in Official Record ). He made serious romantic etchings, eg Street in Sydney 1893, possibly done for the 'Old Sydney’ competition at AGNSW (ML SSVI/ST/1) and there is speculation he was also represented in the 1893 Chicago World Fair. At the Grafton Gallery’s 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’ in 1898, L. Hopkins of The Bulletin Office, Sydney exhibited: cat.3 'My Turn Next!’, cat.4 'Klondyke’, cat. 369 'Prince of Wales and the Devil’, cat.370 'The Australian Attitude, Sydney’ and cat.371 'Not Wanted on the Voyage’ – all lent by the “Bulletin” Newspaper Co. His work was shown in Fifty years of Australian Cartooning in 1964 and in many other cartoon exhibitions since his death. He occasionally painted in watercolours; a monotone watercolour, Night Attack by Blacks , is in ML (SV / 157).
EXAMPLES: (all Bulletin ) King pp.66-7, 72-85, 90-1, 94-5, 98-9, 110; That New Guinea Protectorate 29 Nov 1884, 10; 'Three Ways if Exterminating and Civilizing the noble savage’: He Gets There Just the Same (gun, cross, alcohol) 1890 (Ross Woodrow) cf Laing ; The Shrieking Sisterhood 23 June 1894 (NSW Premier Sir George Dibbs and the Suffragists, ill. Oldfield 1994, 26); “Of Arms and the Woman I sing”/ Virgil/ (slightly altered) , original DG Pic ACC 202 / DG *D35 no.18 (women in the army – need for women to learn to shoot – riding across or side saddle, 'Veteraness – survivor, say, of the great Japano-Australian War of 1915’, nurses “the most charming trained male nurses … sweetly urging our brave wounded girls to 'do try and take a little nourishment’”, shooting at a target labelled 'Man’, machine gun inspection (“where do you put the coffee?”), a female Nelson – “England expects every woman to do her duty” and 'An eye like ma’s to threaten and command – Shakespeare (mutilated to suit the occasion)’) to accompany Scripture up to Date – A Bit of Mixed Metaphor on the Womanhood Suffrage League (an ugly old woman) begging from 'Laban, the Wriggler’ (Premier George 'Yes-No’ Reid), published 2 July 1898.
Art jokes include: The official sculpture and the official poetry of Botany Bay (re Sani 's GPO carvings and Henry Parkes) 10 January 1891, 13, a parody of Charles Bruce 's convict chain gang titled The Landing of our Forefathers From an old print 1891 (ill. King, p.31) and Art as it is in Yass (a rural lady confronting a nude statue) 20 January 1894, 15.
Several large prints of The Roll Call, or The Return of the NSW Regiment from the Soudan , showing William Bede Dalley reviewing the troops, were produced separately by the Bulletin (ML copies include V*CART/33). It was later reproduced by George Taylor in 'The Spirit of Caricature in the Commonwealth; With incidental remarks on Australian “Black and White”’, Commonwealth Annual 2 (1902-3), 32. Hop tells the story of drawing it in 'His Confessions’ 1 June 1914, 18. Elizabeth Butler’s original oil painting The Roll Call was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874 and purchased by Queen Victoria after it became the sensation of that year’s Royal Academy Summer Show; Butler noted that the day following the private view she 'woke up to find myself famous’ (see Autobiography ). Despite enormous publicity in London at the time about the painting and the Queen purchasing it, the purported 'original’ was purchased by the AGNSW from 'a Sydney dealer’ [John Sands]. When it was discovered to be a replica (though done by the artist herself), the dealer – who claimed to have been misled himself – 'promptly took the picture back and returned it to London’. The NAG then only had an engraving by F. Stacpoole after Butler, purchased 1885 (1908 cat. p.150), since deaccessioned.
The affair had excited a widespread interest, second only to the approaching return of our warriors from the Soudan. A voluminous correspondence in the press had riveted public attention to the replica episode, and “The Roll Call” being a celebrated picture, our artist seized upon it as a basis for a cartoon that should be, so to speak, double-pointed, hitting off two events of absorbing public interest. “The Roll Call” or “The Return of the Soudan Contingent,” which was a parody upon Lady Butler’s great painting is to-day the best remembered of the Sydney Bulletin cartoons. Our artist to his own mind has done better things before and since, but nothing which has had the vogue of the “The Roll Call” (Livingston Hopkins, 'Hop, his confessions; chapters from the autobiography of Livingston Hopkins’, Lone Hand 1 June 1914, 18).
The story was also mentioned by Dorothy Hopkins in 1929 (p.135), who called the image 'probably the most notable of all the Bulletin cartoons’. ML also holds 12 large scrapbooks of his cartoons compiled by Hop and an original by 'Hop’s Understudy’.
PORTRAIT: rather straight full-length portrait in Norman Lindsay, Bohemians , 91; Julian Ashton, Livingston Hopkins esq. (“Hop”) 1908, watercolour, AGNSW, gift of the artist 1933 (Ashton’s portrait of Hop, exhibited in 9th Federal Exhibition, Adelaide, was called 'the strongest bit of character portraiture … but it lacks vitality of color somewhat’: 'The Art of the Year’, Lone Hand 1 April 1910, 678 [by various 'art correspondents’]); W.T. Smedley , [portrait of] Hop (Livingston Hopkins) , pencil on grey paper, AGNSW acquired 1929; self-portrait cartoon holding club with 'Bulletin’ on it (ill. King, 64); caricature of Hop [by Will Dyson ? – illegible photocopy] in 1907 Society of Artists catalogue, 38; Hop by Phil May, clay mask (illus. Taylor and Caban 1983, p.29); probable self portrait caricature pointing at a straight portrait plus photographic 'portrait’ of 'Hop and “his understudy”’ in George Taylor, 'The Spirit of Caricature in the Commonwealth; with incidental remarks on Australian “Black and White”’, Commonwealth Annual 2 (1902-3), 31-32.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
