Livingston Hopkins, cartoonist
Livingston Hopkins
photograph

Ravenscroft Album
National Library of Australia
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA'S
FEDERATION GATEWAY


HOPKINS, LIVINGSTON (1846-1927)

A major cartoonist of the Sydney Bulletin during the Federation period

Known as 'Hop', cartoonist, was born on 7 July 1846 at Bellefontaine, Ohio, USA., and married Harriet Augusta Commager on 9 June 1875.

In 1882 Hopkins met W.H. Traill who so inspired him that by February 1883 Hopkins arrived in Sydney with his wife, three children and a two-year contract with the Bulletin. He worked for the Bulletin for more than 30 years, became part-proprietor, and added much to that journal's power and vigour. Best known of 'Hop's' cartoons were the Sudan War and Federation series, and those that caricatured Parkes, Dibbs, Reid, Lyne, Wise and other public figures. On the Hop, a selection of drawings, appeared in 1904, but his output steadily declined until his virtual retirement in 1913, by which time he was a director of the Bulletin.

His 19,000 drawings included social satire, jokes, Bulletin calendars and postcards, and illustrations. His interpretation of the politicians and the regular appearance of his symbolic figures and menagerie of allegorical animals did much to explain the gospel of economic and racial isolationism, Republican nationalism and cultural chauvinism that the Bulletin preached before Federation.

Hopkins formed the first Australian group to practice etching, painted occasionally, made violins, gardened and played bowls. He died in Sydney on 21 August 1927.

Books of interest

Hopkins, Dorothy June. (1929). Hop of the 'Bulletin'. Sydney, Australia: Angus & Robertson.

The Bulletin is available in the Newspaper/Microform Section in paper and microcopy formats. The library also has a biographical cuttings file on Hopkins.

 

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