Design and Art Australia Online

illustrator and cartoonist, was born in Sydney, 28 April 1911, older brother of Frank Hodgkinson. After studying at the Royal Art Society of NSW under Dattilo Rubbo and at East Sydney Technical College under Rayner Hoff, he worked as an illustrator on the Daily Guardian and the Sun in Sydney (1929-31), then on the Melbourne Herald (1932-76). With the writer Hal Porter, he used to frequent the Café Petrushka in Little Collins Street, a 1930s Bohemian haunt that featured the work of young contemporary artists on its walls. In 1938-39 he visited England, France and Italy to study art in European galleries and to investigate commercial printing for the Melbourne Herald.

During WWII he served as an official war artist in New Guinea (Concert Party, Milne Bay), Ceylon, India, Burma and Darwin and was included in the Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture by Australian Official War Artists, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 1943-44 (see catalogue pp.12-14). He held exhibitions of his drawings of the dancers in the De Basil ballet company in 1939 and 1943, the latter in the foyer of His Majesty’s Theatre. His original cartoon, Old Man, Borneo (c.1934-37, La Trobe Library), was included in the 2000 Global Arts Link exhibition Bluey and Curley, whichalso showed a straight portrait sketch, Gunner Jackie Peacock (1942, Australian War Memorial).

Some of Hodgkinson’s post-war drawings are illustrated in Norman Macgeorge (ed.), The Arts in Australia (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1948). They include Studies from Life (male rear and details from life class), p.48; Drawing (55), a white on black image of a man lecturing in a crowded theatre to illustrate Macgeorge’s 'The lecture as an art form’; The Orchestra (63), a very detailed, white on black, theatre scene; The 'Cello Player (65); The Troubadour (68), who looks like a modern woman; and The Reader (71), a white-on-black Renaissance man reading a book by candle light. Both he and Macgeorge were members of the Melbourne Savage Club, Roy becoming a fifty-year member like William Dargie. He drew the Savage Club Christmas card in 1948, showing Santa coming down the chimney and saying to toddler labelled 1948, “Well son! They Haven’t Nationalised Me Yet!!” (ill. Johnson, p.156) A concert programme for the Melbourne Savage Club Jubilee Dinner in 1954, done with Alec Gurney, is illustrated in Johnson (p.157). His oil portrait of Judge Frederico, Savage Club President in 1974-77, is illustrated on p.165.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007