Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist, illustrator and commercial artist, trained as an artist in Melbourne. The NGA holds his poster for the Melbourne 'Art Students Annual Bal Masque’ of July 1911, a hand-coloured line block of a student with palette and brush (ill. Butler p.11). He contributed to Lone Hand , e.g. 'After the show was over’ 1 August 1912, 322-23, and drew at least one cartoon for The Comic Australian , 'The Comic Australian Surfing Academy’ 20 January 1912. While serving in WWI he contributed to a servicemen’s anthology.

Most of Lorimer’s illustrative work, however, was done for the NSW Bookstall Company. He began illustrating their books in 1908; a second followed in 1913 and 11 known illustrated books appeared after the war, in 1919-25, with his busiest period being 1922-23 (ill. Mills, 36). The Triad (10 August 1923, p.40, quoted Mills p.34), reviewing some of the Bookstall’s publications, praised Percy Lindsay 's artwork but had reservations about Lorimer’s illustrations to a racing story, The Jumping Double , by Charles E. Sayers:

“The artist is a Mr. Vernon Lorimer, and we can’t like him as we like Percy. Mr. Lorimer’s illustrations have a newly-laundered and badly-pressed look, and the head of the horse facing page 151 would put a Chinese dragon to the blush [ill. Mills p.36].

“Mr. Lorimer’s peculiarities are intensified in his drawings for another new book, Mr. A. R. Falk’s negligible shocker. This time he experiments with sawn-off figures…”

Mills notes that Lorimer is caricatured from his own pen in the 1922 Rowlandson memorial volume (the NSW Bookstall’s publisher) as something of a hack and suggests he was forced to make a living as a commercial artist against his inclinations. For Art and Australia 1924-29 he did advertisements for the Commonwealth Bank. A linocut, 'The Surf Beach’ c.1923, edn 30, is listed in Lebovic & Warner’s Fifty Years (cat. 62, not ill.).

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007