The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Mollie Horseman worked professionally as a cartoonist and illustrator for over forty years. In 1963 Everybody’s Magazine called her ‘Australia’s only woman cartoonist’. While this was obviously not the case, she was probably the most visible woman working in the field. At their annual ball in 1956, her colleagues in the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club ‘smocked’ her (presented her with an artist’s smock decorated by fellow members) and she was later voted Sydney Savage Club ‘Cartoonist of the Year’. In 1964 she was the only woman in a group photograph of forty-three professional cartoonists and one of nine women among 140 cartoonists in the survey exhibition Fifty Years of Australian Cartooning.

Although she was always able to draw, she was propelled forwards when she came to the attention of Norman Lindsay . Rose and Norman employed the teenage Mollie to be their children’s governess. So impressed was he, recommended her to the National Art School. For financial reasons, she did not complete the course, but it was enough to sharpen her skills to ensure that she received regular employment. She worked regularly for Smith’s Weekly and the Bulletin and her humorous cartoons made her a household name in the 1930s. Perhaps her best known characters were ‘The Tipple Twins’ two secretaries who regularly created office havoc in the pages of the Rydge’s Business Journal, for which she freelanced in the 1940s. Many of her drawings may be found in the Mitchell Library, at the State Library of New South Wales.

Events

• 1928 - 1968