Cecil Lawrence Hartt b. 16 July 1884

Also known as Cec Hartt, Cecil Hartt, Cecil L. Hartt
  • Artist (Cartoonist / Illustrator)
Early 20th century Melbourne-born Sydney and wartime newspaper cartoonist. He was the first president of the Australian Black and White Artists' Club (1924-30) formed on 17 July 1924.

cartoonist, was born on 16 July 1884 in Prahran, Melbourne, son of James Hartt. He had drawing lessons from Alek Sass . After getting a cartoon accepted by the Bulletin , he moved to Sydney in 1909. As a freelance artist from 1908 he contributed to Comments , the Clarion and the Bulletin (e.g. Encouraging Matrimony: Extra damaged lots should demand top prices – on ugly wives) and also to the Comic Australian (e.g. 16 December 1911, 18).

He had cartoons in the Australian Worker in 1915 (Gibbney no.473), the year he enlisted in the 18th Battalion of the NSW Contingent of the AIF. He was badly wounded in the right hip and ankle at Suvla Bay on 27 August 1915, during the Gallipoli campaign. While convalescing in England from 1916 he contributed drawings to the Bystander , Passing Show and London Opinion (there is some speculation Hartt also contributed to the British Australasian , published weekly in London). His booklet of Digger jokes, Humorosities (London, Australian Trading and Agencies, n.d. [1917], 1/-: partial copy in Joan Kerr Archive, National Library of Australia, including a self-portrait), proved a surprise bestseller, selling over 60,000 copies. To Hartt’s astonishment he was presented to King George V. Lone Hand of 1 February 1917, 147, reproduced some of these cartoons.

After his discharge in 1919 Hartt returned to Australia and began work at Smith’s Weekly as its first staff artist. From 1919 until his death he established the character of the 'Digger’ page (which continued for 30 years, the paper’s entire lifetime) with 'The Unofficial History of the AIF’. Original Hartt digger drawings from Smith’s are in the Sue Cross collection (ill. Rainbow, 35). Examples of his Smith 's work include a 1919 cow-cocky joke (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 150), Six stages of a digger 24 June 1922, 22 (see JK Archive), A Treat for the Kiddies (disastrous family outing) and Reducing His Overdraft 4 February 1922, 15. He created the strips “Bob and 'Orace”, “Dummy” and “Ask Bill, he knows Everything”. Many of his cartoons continued to be about the WWI Digger and some were collected into booklets, e.g. Diggerettes and More Diggerettes (n.d. but evidently 1920). The short stocky digger figures he created (with jokes under them) were continued into the 1930s by Frank Dunne then Lance Mattinson .

At the first Artists’ Ball at Sydney Town Hall (21 August 1922), with decorations supervised by D.H. Souter , Hartt went as his own Smith’s Weekly joke block character 'The Dummy’ (see Souter). Hartt was the first president of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club (1924-30) formed on 17 July 1924, which virtually expired with him. (Stan Cross, the next president, was confirmed in this position when the Club was reformed in 1937 as the Australian Black and White Artists Club, although Lindesay’s 1994 history claims that Cross was president from 1931 to 1954, thus giving the club an unbroken history). A good friend of Henry Lawson, Hartt’s life also came unstuck through alcohol (Kirpatrick, 352). On 21 May 1930, he was found dead with a wound in the head and a shotgun beside him on a mountain near Moruya (NSW). His daughter, Dianna de Bring (who presented a Stanley award in 1994), lives in the USA.

Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007