cartoonist and illustrator, was for many years a staff artist on the New York Times . On 1 January 1914, the Lone Hand stated: that Russom was “better known in America than in his own country, for he left Australia for San Francisco at the age of nineteen. After spending five years in the west, where he contributed to illustrated daily and Sunday papers, he came to New York, where, in addition to his journalistic work, he has drawn for most of the leading magazines. He made his first hit with a series of drawings in Life , in which he pictured the transit problems of the future. In these, the aerial railways and the air-ship specials dwarf the motor age to insignificance.”
A cartoon from Life – 'A leading experimenter believes that our lower animals can be grown to enormous sizes if fed on a scientific diet’ – was reproduced on p.145 of the article.
In Sydney, Russom had studied under Julian Ashton and exhibited with the Royal Art Society. His cartoon parodying the RAS, Many a True Word etc. (original ML), is illustrated and discussed in Joan Kerr, Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White (Sydney: National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery, 1999). Even as a youth he was considered something of a prodigy:
Syd Long had a painting bought for the Sydney Gallery when he was eighteen, but Russom was (apparently) a year younger when the trustees bought his pencil sketch which hangs in the black and white section in the Gallery ('Reginald B. Russom’, Lone Hand 1914).
Russom ultimately returned to Australia. He died at Newcastle, NSW, in 1952. A memorial exhibition of his work was held there later that year.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
