Australian Dictionary of Biography

John Frith, c. 1929

Museum of Australian Democracy. Reproduced courtesy of the Frith family.

John Eric Frith (1906–2000), cartoonist and sculptor, was born on 13 June 1906 at St Giles, London, younger of two surviving children of English-born parents Henry Sydney Frith, bootmaker and shopkeeper, and his wife Kate, née Carter. His father died in 1909 and John was educated at boarding schools near London, which he remembered as ‘savage places’ where ‘the food was lousy’ and ‘the masters were brutal’ (Duff et al. 1999, 19). Sport and art were of most interest to him, but his talent for caricature drew censure from his teachers: ‘I got belted more than the average kid at school because I could draw the masters’ (Duff et al. 1999, 20).

Encouraged by his maternal grandfather, Frith developed an interest in farming and applied to the Dreadnought youth migration scheme. In May 1922 he arrived in Sydney with a group of forty-two Dreadnought Boys and was sent for training to the Cowra Experiment Farm run by the New South Wales Department of Agriculture. He began work at a dairy farm at nearby Warwick in September, but in April 1923 his mother arrived in Sydney to take him home.

Back in London, Frith worked as a salesman for Hoover vacuum cleaners then joined the merchant bank Sale and Company as an assistant in the import and export section. In 1927 he was lured to the bank’s office in Yokohama, Japan, by an executive who had been impressed by one of his caricatures. On the voyage to Japan he sketched the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen, later selling the image to the Norwegian consul-general in Sydney. In Japan, Frith recalled, ‘the job bored me to tears’ (Duff et al. 1999, 21), but he enjoyed the freedom of his motorcycle and his visits to Korea. He published without payment some caricatures in an English language newspaper, the Japan Advertiser.

Frith was returning to England in December 1929 when his ship stopped in Sydney and he decided to stay. The Depression hit hard, and life was tough at first, but in March 1930 his snapshot sketch of a State politician impressed an employee of the Bulletin, which published the image and employed him as a cartoonist. He took the opportunity to develop his art, combining skill as a caricaturist with the calligraphic techniques he had discovered in Japan. Within three years he was the principal caricaturist and deputy art editor. He later described his fourteen years at the Bulletin as his ‘most interesting job’ (Duff et al. 1999, 23), and he was grateful for the time he spent working with Norman Lindsay and Ted Scorfield in a relaxed club-like atmosphere. On 31 December 1932 he married Dorothy Mae Horseley, a nurse, at St Augustine’s Church of England, Neutral Bay. They were to have two children, Jacqueline (b. 1938) and Jeffrey (b. 1941).

In December 1944 Frith joined the Sydney Morning Herald as its first daily cartoonist. He soon made an impact, especially with his caricatures of the Federal government’s minister for information, Arthur Calwell, whom he depicted as a cockatoo repeatedly screeching ‘Curse the Press!’ While in Sydney he also began to work as a sculptor, and by 1950 he had modelled in clay and cast in plaster and bronze the caricatured heads of 150 distinguished Australians. His plaster bust of Ben Chifley (1951), based on sketches he had made in a private sitting the day Chifley died, is held by the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.

Recruited to the Melbourne Herald by (Sir) Keith Murdoch in March 1950, Frith reflected that ‘it was difficult remaking my reputation’ (People Magazine 1953, 12) in a city that regarded political jokes with a cynicism he attributed to twenty-five years of unstable State government. He felt pressure to avoid being too political, especially in cartoons depicting trade unions. During his time at the Herald he developed his trademark signature, a scraggy bird with splayed feet, which was a feature of his cartoons for the rest of his career. His favourite subject was the Victorian premier Henry Bolte.

Retiring in 1969, Frith lived in London for two years, then briefly in Spain. A five-thousand-year-old piece of terracotta in the British Museum ignited his interest in the material and, back in Australia, he began making hundreds of pieces. Some were made for the Bendigo Pottery and included a range of Toby jugs of famous Australians; he also made a range of Reform flasks, based on the prime ministers of Australia.

Like his cartoon alter ego ‘John Cit,’ Frith was readily recognisable with his perky nose and wide moustache. An extrovert who loved the company of people, he was a master storyteller in both cartoon and traditional forms. Retirement provided time for creating more pottery, caricatures and cartoons, and picture stories for his grandchildren. He eventually moved into the Broadmead aged-care hostel, Hawthorn, where he drew cartoons on a large whiteboard until his eyesight failed. Predeceased by his wife (d. 1982) and survived by their two children, he died on 21 September 2000 at Richmond and was cremated. A retrospective exhibition, A Brush with Politics: The Life and Work of John Frith, opened at Old Parliament House, Canberra, in July 2001, then toured interstate. The New England Regional Art Museum holds a portrait of Frith (1946) by Henry Aloysius Hanke.