These are a number of photos from the recent Jack Waugh exhibition held at the Jamberoo School of Arts, by the Jamberoo Red Cross. I have to admit the landscapes he did were so instantly local and Australian. He was mainly famous for illustrations in magazines, but he did a lot of illustrations for lot of local history publications (mostly Jamberoo) and seemed to catch that fiercely parochial but very open spirit of Jamberoo.
These are part of a sketch series of local Jamberoo life, done in a rather 19th Century Bulletin style
Of course the big star at the exhibition was the original of the ‘Santa and the Drover’ illustration
used so widely for Arnotts on its biscuit tins
and in its ads.
I wonder if Jack Waugh was related to the old dairy family of Waughs in Jamberoo ( the cricketers Steve and Mark Waugh and the equally estimable other brothers Dean Waugh,and Danny Waugh) are.
Congrats to Jamberoo Red Cross for a very professional exhibition, which seemed very well attended, and by the number of local families lending art, it seems ‘trey cool’ to have a ‘Jack Waugh’ on the wall. Most of the material os preserved by his son and the rest of the surviving family. I wouldn’t mind a Jack Waugh on my wall!
If you want to know more about Jack, this is by far the best article on him, by Greg Ray, and rather than pinch all his reaearch and change a few adjectives (as they train you at uni to do) I cannot not do more than merely step aside with a quiet smile and usher you forth to it,
http://www.collectingbooksandmagazines.com/waugh.html
This intro give a good summation,,,,
“John Edward (Jack) Waugh was a prolific commercial artist and illustrator whose work appeared in many Australian publications.
He was one of the artistic mainstays of the K.G. Murray publishing group and his illustrations were a prominent feature in such titles as Man, Man Junior, Adam and Cavalcade.
His glorious double-page paintings – like those of fellow artist Phil Belbin – adorned the pages of Man through its heyday in the late 1940s and 50s to the end of the magazine’s life in the 1970s.
Perhaps his best-known single illustration, however, was painted for the Arnotts biscuit company in 1964 and appeared on the back page of the Australian Woman’s Weekly several times over a number of years. The picture showed Santa Claus pausing for a rest by a country wayside, sharing a billy of tea (and some biscuits) with a wiry Aussie drover. The drover was Waugh himself (he often modelled for his own pictures in a mirror) and the picture was such a hit with Arnotts and the public that instead of appearing once only it was republished year after year at Christmas time. Eventually Arnotts, in recognition of Waugh’s creation of a powerful and valuable image, paid him an extra cheque and thanked him for his inspiration. In a way, the outwardly tough but inwardly sentimental drover is a fitting symbol of the independent, self-reliant and outdoorsy ex-serviceman whose strongly masculine drawing style co-existed with a passion for nature, the bush and conservation. “
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