Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist, oil painter and illustrator, was born in Melbourne, Vic, and grew up in the suburb of Sandringham. He studied art at the National Gallery School. In 1948 he went to Perth to play in the WA tennis championships and was offered a job on the Daily News . He remained in Perth for 20 years as cartoonist on the Daily News and the Western Mail e.g. 'Rigby and School Help’/’“State aid’s not enough – we’ll need the Army and Air Force too!”’, Daily News 1966 (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 86) and 6 examples in Walsh 1966. He won the Walkely Cartoon Award a record five times (1960, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1969) – the 1969 one, published in the Daily News , being on Brisbane’s censorship of Beardsley’s Lysistrata drawings (straight copy, ill. Rigby, 69). He was Highly Commended in 1968, runner-up to fellow WA cartoonist Cedric Baxter .

In 1969, when his cartoons were being run in News Ltd newspapers across Australia, Rigby left for London, aiming to do cartoons for the Sun and News of the World (owned by Murdoch) for six months. He stayed five years. With England as his base, he travelled and worked in China, the USA, USSR (Russia), Europe and Vietnam. He also sent work back to Australia, e.g. 'Sharks’, Daily Telegraph 10 December 1975 (included in Christine Dixon’s exhibition). In 1977 he returned to Perth, but moved to New York later that year in order to work on the New York Post . He stayed for 12 years after again intending a six-month stint. When he retired, intending to return to Australia, the New York Daily News made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and he remained in New York. For a while, Paul and his son Bay Rigby, a cartoonist on the New York Post , worked for rival newspapers.

Rigby cartoons from the Sydney Daily Mirror are illustrated King 172, 178, 186. He was extremely influential on Australian cartooning. Someone (Petty?) noted that everybody wanted to draw like Rigby in the 1970s. Cartoonists who acknowledge his influence included Bill Mitchell of the Australian and Sean Leahy (also from WA). His practice of drawing his Perth Daily News cartoons on a duo-tone shade board (which he appears to have got from Giles) was widely emulated: by Benier (who drew for the rival Sydney afternoon paper, the Sun , and took over on the Mirror in the early 1970s after Rigby returned to London: Foyle, 94), by Warren Brown (who in turn replaced Benier on the Mirror ) and by Geoff Hook (“Jeff”), Rod Waller , Dean Alston , Alan Langoulant , Zanetti , Vince O’Farrell ( Illawarra Mercury ), Moir , Mitchell and Pryor .

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007