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Patrick Brown

One of the things I'm trying to do with the Irish Comics Wiki is to give modern Irish cartoonists some sense of context and tradition, and I've been delving into history to find our forebears. One such was...

John Doyle, known by the pen name H. B., one of the most important political cartoonists of the 19th century. Born in Dublin in 1797, he moved to London in the 1822 and began publishing monthly political lithographs in 1827. His work appeared in The Times from 1829 to 1851. His is considered the founder of the school of cartooning that included John Leech and John Tenniel and led to Punch magazine. His grandson Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the creator of Sherlock Holmes.



Doyle was, until a couple of days ago, the earliest Irish cartoonist I'd been able to find, but I've recently unearthed a couple of references to William O'Keefe, a contemporary of George III was was working as early as 1794. As yet I know absolutely nothing more about him except that Kenneth Baker describes his work as "vigorous". I have Baker's book George III: A Life in Caricature, which the author and former Thatcher minion himself tells me has three of his cartoons reproduced in it, on order from the library. Hopefully it will also include a few biographical details.

Patrick Brown

Latest interesting Irish comics fact I've dug up - John Kindness, the well-known painter, sculptor and multi-media artist behind the Big Fish in Belfast, Romulus and Seamus at the Fire Station in Dublin, and lots of post-modern meldings of ancient styles with modern media, drew comics in the 70s. He created a small press comic called "The Hand" in about 1975, and drew satirical strips for the Belfast People's Comic around the same time. I haven't seen any of his comic work yet, but it pushes the birth of Irish small press comics back at least as early as Eddie Campbell's Beem Gotelump in Britain.

Thanks to Pieter A. Bell and Davy Francis for the information.

Patrick Brown

When researching the wiki I find a lot of artists who are noteworthy because their lives are interesting or their work was influential, but every once in a while I find one who just draws like a bastard.

If you've been following my occasional bulletins you may recall that Davy Francis suggested I look into Dublin Opinion, a satirical magazine published from the 20s to the 60s. I borrowed a book from the library called Fifteen Years of Dublin Opinion, published in 1937, and while founder Charles E. Kelly (father of Frank Kelly, alias Father Jack) is by far the most prolific cartoonist, the one whose work grabs the eye is one W. H. Conn.

He's a master of light and shade, drawing in pen and ink with few outlines, building up tone with hatching. His drawings are in the tradition of early 20th century book illustration, and as good as any I've seen in that field. He contributes some satirical cartoons with captions in the traditional style, but the magazine seems to have appreciated what they had and just allowed him to draw what he wanted, like this gorgeous ghostly illustration:


I have seven more of his drawings scanned at the wiki. Found out a little about him this afternoon, taking notes on the back of my hand from a dictionary of 20th century Irish artists in Waterstones. He was from Belfast, as it turns out, born in 1895, the son of a lithographer. My great grandfather was apprenticed as a lithographer in the 1890s - I wonder did they know each other?

Aside from his work for Dublin Opinion, Conn was a staff artist for the Belfast Telegraph, and drew the comic strip "The Doings of Larry O'Hooligan" for the sports paper Ireland's Saturday Night. He also painted colour posters for Northern Ireland Railways. He died in 1973.

Patrick Brown

Some recent additions

• Flann O'Riain, aka political cartoonist Doll, and creator of RTE kids' TV show Daithí Lacha, who died earlier this month
• John Kennedy, Strabane political cartoonist
• Charles E Kelly, founder and prolific contributor to the satirical magazine Dublin Opinion. He founded the magazine as a 19-year-old civil servant in 1922, drew bucketloads of cartoons for it in several different styles, all the while working his way up the civil service to become Director of Broadcasting and Director of National Savings. His son, Frank Kelly, played Father Jack in Father Ted.