Annie Jane Hope Campbell - (c1866 - 1920) Artist, caricaturist - Royal Historical Society of Victoria
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Annie Jane Hope Campbell
(c1866 – 1920)
Artist, caricaturist
Born in Belfast in about 1866, Annie Jane Hope Campbell to December 1897 she travelled extensively in the West
was one of four children of Samuel Watson Campbell, a Australian goldfields, particularly Kalgoorlie, sketching
merchant, and his second wife Annie Holmes. important figures in the political and economic landscape of
She spent her early life in Belfast then trained at the the area. Her sketches appeared regularly in the Kalgoorlie
National Art Training Schools in South Kensington, London, newspapers, in which Annie was identified as the sketch
most likely in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The Training artist ‘Boz’, so it seems she styled herself an Australian
School, now absorbed into the Royal College of Art, was Charles Dickens. Her distinctive signature makes her work
then principally a teacher training institution, although it easy to identify, whether she used the name ‘Boz’, her initials
also trained designers and craftsmen, and counted among AJHC or Annie Hope Campbell.
its alumni the likes of Kate Greenaway, George Clauscen,
Gertrude Jekyll and Beatrix Potter.
By 1895, Annie, now a graduate of the Art Training School,
arrived in Australia to join her family who had been living
in Melbourne since the mid-1880s. Her older half-siblings
remained in the UK, her half-sister Elizabeth marrying
William McFadden Orr, Professor of Mathematics based in
Dublin and half-brother Samuel marrying in London in 1900.
The following year, Samuel (known in the family as Charlie),
C
wife Agnes and infant daughter Dora settled in Sydney
Above: Bagging ore at the Australia Mine,
where Charlie died in 1903, of tuberculosis, according to a
Kalgoorlie. Critic, 27 November 1897. Right:
family member. W.A. Irwin, General Manager, Associated
Annie lived with her family in Kooyong Road, Malvern, Mines. Critic, 13 November 1897.
earning her living through her art. She went where the
commissions took her and this meant that from October
Shortly after her return to Graham in 1911 and Edith married Ethel’s brother
Melbourne she set off once Roland in 1917. Annie, who did not marry, continued to
more, in April 1898, this time live at home.
aboard the Ormuz bound Although Annie’s sister Edith identified as an artist in
for London, her ultimate several electoral rolls, she revelled in the outdoors life.
destination Dublin where it She was a horsewoman, an animal lover and a leading
is likely she visited her half- member of the Kennel Club and the Ladies Rifle Club.
sister Elizabeth Orr. On board
Annie, whose health was never robust, practised her
the Ormuz was one of the
art and journalism when her health permitted, was a
cricket sensations of the day,
member of the Historical Society of Victoria and the
Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji Jadeja
Lyceum Club, taught art and undertook commissions.
(known as ‘Ranji’), an Indian
who played cricket for England and who was later the In May 1909, when the embryonic Historical Society
ruler of the Indian Princely state of Nawanaga. of Victoria (later the Royal Historical Society) put
A few days into the journey, Annie sketched a rattan out a call for reminiscences of early pioneers, Annie
chair decorated with crossed cricket bats, a gift from made contact, saying that she had a collection of
a ‘Melbourne Lady Admirer’ to the celebrity cricketer. reminiscences and portraits to offer the Society. She
(Critic, 9 April 1898) joined on 14 July 1909, being the Society’s sixty-ninth
member and the third woman member. Her father,
Samuel Watson Campbell, also joined and he is
It was not until March 1901 that Annie appeared in the recorded as being RHSV member #3.]
Australian newspapers again, so it is possible that hers
Annie took the Society’s call to collect reminiscences
was a prolonged visit to Britain, to attend the London
to heart and in that first year, she donated drawings of
wedding of her half-brother Samuel Campbell, perhaps
old colonists, including a portrait of ‘Rolf Boldrewood’
and almost certainly to spend time with her half-sister
(Thomas Browne), the author of Robbery Under Arms.
Elizabeth in Dublin.
Her interview with Boldrewood appeared in the Leader
During this period, Annie was not the only member newspaper, as did other pieces on poet Adam Lindsay
of the Australian Hope Campbells to be absent from Gordon and ‘old colonists’ such as Horace Claringbold,
Australia, her brother Edmund serving as a Trooper a Crimean War veteran; Mrs William Bertram who
under Lieutenant-Colonel Byng during the Boer War arrived in Melbourne as an eleven year old in the
C
(1899-1901). first year of white settlement; Miss Clara Murton of
On Annie and Edmund’s return to Australia, the three North Fitzroy, a pioneer of education and John Waugh
Hope Campbell siblings – Annie, Edmund and Edith who had lived in Melbourne for 74 years and whose
– lived in the family home ‘Inverary’ in Kooyong Road, reminiscences can be found in the RHSV’s Manuscripts
Malvern with their parents. Edmund married Ethel Collection.
Left: Rolf Boldrewood, Leader, 15 May 1909. Right: Horace Claringbold and wife, Leader, 19 March Left: Mrs William Bertram, Leader, 8 July 1911. Right: Miss Clara
1910. Murton, Leader, 25 May 1912.
At the end of 1912, Annie resigned as a member of the reading a document in his War Office. Signed ‘Boz’, this
Historical Society. This was the year of her mother’s pen and ink drawing was made during the war years, a
death and perhaps that, and the long periods of time when Annie was actively fund-raising for the war
inactivity forced on her by ill health, explain her effort through her art.
withdrawal from the Society.
She pursued her art whenever possible. The
newspapers of the day provide brief glimpses of her
work, Table Talk reporting in April 1911 that she had
just completed a frieze for the nursery of a Melbourne
socialite. Comprising twenty-five drawings based on
familiar nursery rhymes and ‘full of life and movement’,
we are told that ‘the treatment is so original ... that even
grown ups are fascinated.’ Later, in 1916, at a dinner
in honour of Katherine Susannah Prichard, who had
just won the Hodder and Stoughton prize for best
Australian novel with The Pioneers, Melbourne artists
created menu cards illustrating scenes and characters
C
from the novel. Annie’s card was presented to the
author.
One of the few examples of Annie Hope Campbell’s
work in public collections can be found at the National Image courtesy National Library of Australia,
Library of Australia. It is a caricature of Billy Hughes ID number 6340921.
Annie articulated her position on Australia’s
participation in World War One through her art. She
created and donated a number of patriotic posters, all
auctioned to raise funds for the war effort. Like Jessie
Webb, the first woman to join the Historical Society,
Annie was actively pro-war. There were others within
the Historical Society, such as Professor William
Harrison Moore and his wife Edith, and barrister John
Latham, married to Webb’s friend Ella Tobin. The
women, at least, would have known each other through
the Lyceum Club.
In December 1915, Annie created a stir when it
was revealed that ‘Boz’, the winner of the State
Parliamentary Recruiting Committee Poster design
competition, was actually Miss Annie J. Hope Campbell,
Annie Hope Campbell’s prize winning World
the only woman entrant, the Weekly Times declaring War One recruiting poster ‘Come Lads, Give
that she had ‘wrested the recruiting poster prize from Us a Spell’. Courtesy Australian War Memorial.
280 competitors’. It was shown for the first time at a ARTV07585.
crowded patriotic meeting of the National Council of
Women (NCW) at the Melbourne Town Hall in January
1916. The Herald commented that ‘it was a fitting tribute
to the artist that her design should make its first public
Within a year of the war’s ending, Annie Campbell died
appearance at a meeting convened by women.’
of cancer at ‘ Windarra’ Private Hospital in Toorak. She
The newspaper could have added it was fitting, too, was fifty-four. She is buried in the Presbyterian Section
that it should have been so feted at a meeting of the of St Kilda Cemetery with her brother Edmund, his wife
NCW in Victoria where the members saw working for Ethel and her sister Edith and her husband Roland
peace as tantamount to treason. Graham. Their parents are buried in a nearby grave.
Cheryl Griffin
May 2020 CSources:
Sydney Mail, 18 November 1903
RHSV archives – minutes, early correspondence; membership records Table Talk, 10 March 1904, 6 April 1911, 6 January 1916
RHSV - John Waugh’s reminiscences, Collection Lounge https://www. Weekly Times, 1 January 1916, 23 October 1920
historyvictoria.org.au/collections-lounge/personal-reminiscences-of-john- Western Mail (Perth), 28 October 1920
waugh/ based on material in RHSV Manuscripts Collection (MS 000091)
Damousi, Joy, ‘Hidden by the myth: Women’s leadership in war and peace’, in
Irish baptismal records (found on Ancestry and Family Search) Stephens, David & Broinowski, Alison, The Honest History Book, New South
English birth, death, marriage indexes Publishing, Sydney, 2017, pp211-224.
English 1901 Census Quartly, Marian and Smart, Judith, Respectable Radicals: A History of the
Ancestry family trees National Council of Women of Australia 1896-2006, Monash University
Publishing, Clayton, Victoria, 2015.
Victorian electoral rolls
Smart, Judith, ‘ Women Waging War: The National Council of Women of
Victorian birth, death, marriage indexes Victoria 1914-1920, Victorian Historical Journal, Volume 86, number 1, June 2015,
Sands and McDougall street directories pp 61-82.
St Kilda Cemetery records Who’s Who in the World of Women, Victoria, Australia. Centenary edition. Vol II,
Probate and wills, PROV. 1934, The Reference Presidents Association, Melbourne, 1934
Victorian Shipping records (PROV)
UK Shipping records (via Ancestry)
For her half-sister Elizabeth Orr http://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/
Biographies/Orr.html
Australian War Memorial collection
National Library of Australia collection
Age, 10 June 1903, 18 December 1908, 22 December 1915, 23 February 1916
Argus, 11 November 1903
Australasian, 1 January 1898, 28 March 1898, 23 October 1920
Brighton Southern Cross, 9 March 1901
Clare’s Weekly (Perth), 23 October 1897, 4 December 1897, 9 April 1898
Critic (Adelaide), 13 November 1897, 27 November 1897, 12 February 1898,
19 February 1898, 5 March 1898, 9 April 1898
Evening News (Sydney), 25 January 1901
Graphic of Australia, 14 September 1917
Herald, 22 December 1915, 25 January 1916, 22 February 1916, 14 October 1920,
19 October 1920
Kalgoorlie Miner, 21 October 1897, 22 October 1897, 30 November 1897
C
Kalgoorlie Western Argus, 28 October 1897
Leader, 15 May 1909, 8 January 1910, 19 March 1910, 28 February 1911, 8 April
1911, 8 June 1911, 30 December 1911, 25 May 1912, 19 October 1912
Melbourne Punch, 11 July 1895
Punch, 3 January 1907, 6 November 1913
Quiz and the Lantern (Adelaide), 16 December 1897
Designed by Katrin StrohlYou can also read
