Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist, illustrator and painter, was born Leonard Frank Reynolds in Hobart, Tas, on 3 March 1897. He attended Hobart Technical College in 1909-12, 1914 and 1918 and exhibited with the Art Society of Tasmania in 1918-19. Then he moved to Melbourne and contributed to Lone Hand , e.g. Seeking Knowledge 'HE: “I can never find anything I want; to run a house properly we should tell each other where things are kept.”/ SHE: “Well, suppose we start with your late nights!”’ 1 November 1920, 39; Pleasure in everything 'THE PESSIMIST: “If I died to-day the sun would shine as brightly tomorrow.”/ THE OPTIMIST: “Yes, but it’s nice to know you’d have a fine day for your funeral!”’ 1 January 1921, 7; Luxurious Living [shopkeeper to old bushie] '“Anything else, Sir?”/ “Oh, give me a tin of treacle; dammit, a man must have a blow-out sometimes!”'1 January 1921, 11; also in December 1920 issue.

Reynolds was employed as cartoonist and caricaturist on the Melbourne Sun Pictorial and Evening Sun , then as staff artist on the Melbourne Herald . C.J. Dennis was there at the same time and Reynolds drew a portrait/caricature of him signed 'To C.J.D. with regards L. F. Reynolds’ (illustration facing p.76 in Alec H. Chisholm’s The Making of a Sentimental Bloke: A sketch of the remarkable career of C.J. Dennis , Georgian House, Melbourne, 1946). He also contributed to the Bulletin ; 14 original cartoons of 1917-31 & 240 caricatures of Tasmanian and Victorian subjects, e.g. Reg Midwood , are in the ML Bulletin collection. He drew for Aussie , e.g. cover of shady-looking young woman coming out of a shop featuring a display of stockings in the window with the label 'Guaranteed Fast’, published 15 June 1922 (ill. Michael Sharkey, The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Humour , OUP, Melbourne 1988, 100).

Reynolds took over drawing the Herald 's comic strip 'Mr Melbourne Day By Day’ in 1925 when Jimmy Bancks returned to Sydney (an original Mr Melbourne strip of c.1934-37 is in LT, don. 1998). He also drew cartoons for Murdoch’s Melbourne Punch (1924-25), e.g. “Hey, Bill; there goes the bloke wot patted Sutcliffe on the back” [street kids] (ill. Lindesay, WWW , 114) and subsequently for Table Talk (expired 1930). Other cartoons include The Justice of Art; a tale of retribution , where an enraged artist thrown out of his studio by a greedy landlord paints the landlord as 'Greed’, wins lots of money for it and buys the studio, in turn throwing his old landlord on the street, Home 1 January 1927, 21.

A member of the Melbourne Savage Club, Reynolds drew a very serious pencil portrait of the Club’s seventh president Percy P. Cook (ill. Dow 27). Dow also reproduces his Savage Club cartoon The Club gets a new carpet with Mr Melbourne – I think – carrying a 'first prize’ parcel (p.50). The National Library has several original watercolour caricatures by Reynolds, including Portrait of Thomas Griffith Taylor 1919 and Portrait of J.A. Lyons 1927. Listed as by 'Les’ Reynolds in NLA IMAGES and News October 1996, 19, they are signed 'L.F. Reynolds’ – his usual signature.

In 1939 Reynolds was discovered drowned at the base of a cliff in the Melbourne, Vic, seaside suburb of Beaumaris – a 'fatal accident’, Dow states.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007