illustrator, was born in Lismore, NSW, the second of the four children of James Whitmore, a tailor (and lifelong Mason) and his wife, Mary Brown (Zillah, Frank, Arthur – known as Bob – and Olga). Some time after Frank’s birth the family moved to Sydney and lived in South Kensington. Frank later attended Cleveland Boy’s High School (though not to matriculation level), where he designed the school badge. Aged about 15 (by 1920), he joined J.S. Watkins’ (Wattie’s) Art Academy in Jamison Street, Sydney, where he quickly became the top student, according to a fellow student, the 17-year-old John Baird . A self-portrait aged 17, painted in 1922, is illustrated by Lee Whitmore and presumably remained in the family.

Nicknamed the 'boy painter’ or 'boy artist’, Frank showed a 'remarkable painting, “The Blue Dress” [a portrait of a young woman], at the Royal Art Society’s Show’ before he was 21, said by a local newspaper reviewer to be 'a masterpiece of its kind’, while his black and white work was also considered to show great promise. The 1923 Royal Art Society show included 'excellent examples of fine pencil-drawing’ by 'Mr. F. Whitmore, Mr. Trindall and Mr. Balfour’, according to William Moore in Art in Australia , and his review was illustrated with Whitmore’s pencil portrait of an elderly man. The Sydney Mail (2 September 1925) illustrated his 'clever wash drawing’ of a girl lying on a sofa beside a grammaphone, Listening In , shown at that year’s Royal Art Society exhibition.

Whitmore is said to have won a scholarship to the USA, donated by A.T. Rofe of Sydney’s Millions Club c.1930, but although William Moore wrote that he stayed there and became a well-known illustrator, in fact he didn’t go. Having discovered he was colour blind, he withdrew from exhibiting and gave up his ambition to be a “fine” artist. Instead, he worked as a commercial artist in Sydney for the rest of his life. His wife, Valdar Shailer, a fellow student at “Wattie’s” whom he married in 1936, mixed his colours and checked them for him. At the time of their marriage Valdar was running a small business of her own called “Service Studios”, which did a variety of jobs such as colouring the slides used for cinema ads. There were two children: Lee (b.1947) and Kent (b.1950).

Frank Whitmore initially worked for a small studio, Griffin Shave, until it collapsed during the Depression. He then set up as a freelance commercial artist. He did numerous covers for the Sydney Mail in the 1930s (until it ceased publication with the issue of 28 December 1938) and covers of Home and Woman’s Day in the late 1940s-early 1950s. He rented rooms in the city with several other artists, including his brother Arthur – known as Bob – who worked in advertising, Brian Weakes, Dick Kentwall and Jimmy Dale. He and Bob were active in the Black and White Artists’ Association in the 1930s. Frank’s many friends in the group included Gordon Franklin, Jack Kilgour , John Santry, “WEP”, Will Mahoney , George Finey , John Baird, Margaret Coen and the Lindsay family. He was involved in running the Artists’ Balls held annually in the Town Hall or Trocadero (see description of one of the balls in Meg Stewart’s book on Margaret Coen, Autobiography of My Mother ).

In 1940-41 Frank designed a house and studio on Commodore Street, Waverton, and from then on always worked from home (photographs of home in Lee Whitmore’s biography). Excluded from military service because of his colour-blindness, he spent the war years illustrating children’s books, supplies from overseas being no longer available.

Frank always carried a sketchbook with him in the early days and made extensive studies of physical types and different nationalities. He was influenced by Frank Brangwyn and by American illustrators such as N.C. Wyeth. Like them, he was a keen researcher and historian who always took care to get details correct. Lee notes that he had assembled a huge picture file over 40 years, which filled 'four large wooden filing cabinets in the corner of his studio’.

Lee Whitmore’s manuscripts and biography includes 'oil painting studies’ (very commercial-art looking) and family portraits, e.g. 'Valdar and Baby Lee’ 1947 (ink drawing), 'Valdar and son Kent c.1955’ (painting) and daughter Lee looking into a mirror (painting), as well as straight commercial artwork, notably an advertisement for Actil that used Lee and Kent in pyjamas as models (published Australian Women’s Weekly 8 September 1954) with an accompanying photograph of them posing. Lee notes that her father 'seemed to do endless ads for Nestles, Milo and cough syrup for which my brother and I were often used as models… He had a long-term relationship as a freelance artist with the advertising firm Hansen Rubensohn (later taken over by McCann Erickson) where his brother Bob was now an Art Director.’ He continued to work until a couple of years before his death in 1967.

Little original work remains since all artwork became the property of the companies that commissioned it and was normally destroyed. Frank himself threw out much artwork, but Valder retrieved favourite pieces and hid them from him. In the 1990s Lee Whitmore is believed to have given a collection of original material to the Powerhouse Museum and the AGNSW.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007