Pixie O'Harris

painter, illustrator, muralist, cartoonist and writer, was born on 15 October 1903 in Cardiff, Wales, fifth of the eight children of George Frederick Harris (see National Gallery of Australia australianprints.gov.au website), painter-chairman of the Royal Art Society in Cardiff and RA exhibitor, and Rosetta Elizabeth, née Lucas. In 1920 the family migrated to WA, arriving in 1921. On board the Demosthenes the 16-year old Rhona was given the nickname "Pixie", which she assumed for the rest of her life.

The family lived briefly in Perth, where Pixie exhibited fairy pictures with the WA Society of Arts, then moved to Sydney. (In 1930 the journalist 'P.P.' claimed that 'Pat O'Harris' had published a story and picture in the Triad at the age of 10 (i.e. before migrating), meaning c.1925 since 'P.P.' believed that 'Pat' was only 15 in 1930 and reported that she was studying art at East Sydney Technical College. As a result there is some speculation that Pat O'Harris might not in fact be Pixie O'Harris as has been previously assumed.) Pixie O. Harris worked as a commercial artist with the stationers and printers John Sands while attending Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School in 1922-23. In 1933 her watercolour Thieves was included in the Sydney Art School retrospective exhibition.

Her first major children's book commission was to draw black-and-white illustrations for Maud Rennor Liston's Cinderella's Party (1923). She then spent a short time in Adelaide sporadically attending art school before returning to Sydney. For the next three years she worked as a fashion illustrator for Anthony Hordern's department store, wrote and illustrated stories in the Sydney Mail, and drew cartoons and caricatures for the Bulletin. Four original cartoons of 1925-30 and two undated caricatures (both of men) are at Mitchell Library [ML] Px*D498/12-17. She also did cartoons for Aussie, eg (male swimmer to woman in elaborate bathing costume) '"It's great! Won't you come in?"/ "My dear, I'd have to go and change"' 1926 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 171); (ordinary suburban couple with odd pointed gumnut hair styles) "Darling, what is the weather forecast for to-day? I want to go to town to buy a new frock and hat."/ "Cyclonic storm, thunder, hail and possibly a tidal wave!" 15 May 1930.

The Pixie O. Harris Fairy Book, an illustrated collection of radio stories by Pixie and other authors published in 1925, made her name. Soon afterwards, however, she changed it to 'Pixie O'Harris', admiring the apostrophe a printer mistakenly added. She wrote a fairy poem and illustrated it for Ink #1 (1932, 9), wrote and broadcast a children's program for radio 2UE, and contributed to the Australian Women's Weekly, e.g. illustration to poem about witches 28 October 1933, 30.

In the early 1930s Connie Robertson, editor of the Women's Budget, invited her to do a series of 'Pictures of the Near Great'. The result was a series of weekly 'gentle caricatures' (acc. to Pixie's interview with Hazel de Burgh). Nine original pen and ink caricatures in the series, collected by Connie Robertson and presented to the State Library of New South Wales [SLNSW] (ML PxA30), depict Frank Dalby Davison, Dulcie Deamer (in SLNSW b/w exhibition 1999), the woman poet E.M. England, writer Louise Mack, Price Conigrave, sculptor Rayner Hoff, sculptor Eileen McGrath, artist Dora Wilcox (Mrs William Moore) and Jessie Urquhart. A pencil drawing, Freda Thompson after her flight from England to Australia 1934 is in the National Library of Australia (PIC R10895). Pixie commented not long before she died:

"I could've done political cartoons. I used to caricature people - I was rather cruel with my pencil when I was young - till I found people were so upset they'd tear my caricatures off the wall of an exhibition. Especially women, they didn't like it at all, being caricatured, and some of my fellow writers. So I gave up being cruel. When I caricature now, I do it for men only, because they can take it better". (Guiffré p.185, quoted O'Sullivan p.122).

An oil painting c.1972 (coloured photograph ML SPF/O'HARRIS PIXIE) depicts 'Henry Kendall and his brother in the bush cradle', while an oil of Ray Mathew in Italy c.1960, painted from a photograph, is in the SLNSW (ML 89S). In c.1983 she did a self-portrait as she appeared at the age of six (obviously from a photograph), now ML 979. Any element of caricature in her portraits is minimal and becomes increasingly so, as she admitted.

In 1927 Pixie O'Harris married Bruce Pratt, editor of The Australian Encyclopedia; they had three daughters (one is Robyn Tranter). In hospital after the birth of the third, Pixie loathed the blank walls of her room and despaired of the effect such clinical bleakness would have upon 'children who sometimes have to spend weeks or months in hospitals'. So she painted a kangaroo fantasy mural on the walls of Wade House at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in 1939. Over the following 40 years she did about 50 murals for children's institutions for which she was awarded an MBE in 1976.

The 22 children's books Pixie wrote and illustrated in her lifetime include Pearl Pinkie and Sea Greenie (1935), The Fortunes of Poppy Treloar (1941), Marmaduke the Possum (1941) and Poppy and the Gems (1944). Her last, Loveleaves the Koala, appeared in 1985. The final book she illustrated (with watercolours and pen and ink drawings) was The Pixie Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Melbourne: Carroll Foundation, 1990). It was listed as no.125 in US collector Charles Lovett's '125 landmark publications in the history of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland' and the drawings were said to be "not only charming, they are uniquely Australian. Her Alice has pig-tails, jeans, and a T-shirt adorned with a koala bear. In the drawing of Alice falling down a rabbit hole [pen and ink, Carroll Foundation], the map on the wall is of Australia, though it is hanging sideways... (Alice in Australia exhibition)".

Pixie began a successful parallel career as an exhibiting painter in 1937 when she and Joyce Abbot held a joint exhibition at the Wynyard Book Club. She began painting oil portraits and landscapes in the 1960s, when fairies were unfashionable and her books had fallen from favour with publishers and librarians (some were reprinted in the 1970s when attitudes, once again, were changing). Pixie O'Harris died in 1991.

Anita Callaway, Joan Kerr.