Samuel Garnet Wells

Popular political and sporting cartoonist who worked predominantly in Melbourne, Victoria.

Samuel Garnet Smith Wells was born in North Sydney, New South Wales, on 2 February 1885. He was the son of Samuel Smith Wells, who was born in Middlebie, Dumfries, Scotland, and his mother was Emmeline Little who was born in Sydney.

Wells' mother passed away in December 1885 and his father then remarried Anne Collier. Wells and his two elder sisters were then raised at Kiama, New South Wales. He was educated at Kiama Grammar School and upon leaving school Wells started a career as a sailor.

He married his first wife, Grace Maud Pike, in 1907 in the Sydney suburb of Manly. Her family were landowners in the Junee District of New South Wales. However, the financial crisis of 1907 in the USA created a protracted trade depression and Wells went to New Zealand looking for work.

In 1909 Wells was at the Royal Artillery South Channel Fort at Portsea in Victoria working in the draftsman's office and later was in charge of the guns at the fort after the draftsman's office was disbanded. The fact that he was often away from home resulted in a rift with his wife and baby son, and the couple divorced in 1910.

The earliest evidence of Wells' capacity for artistic drawing was in 1911 when he was a Bombardier member of the Royal Australian Garrison Artillery at the Queenscliff Fort. While stationed there he would constantly amaze and astonish his friends with his ability with a pencil and eventually he gained enough confidence to send contributions to the weekly newspapers. As his popularity grew Wells found that there was more demand for his work.

In 1911 Wells married Margaret Elizabeth Egan, daughter of farmers Kevin and Maria Egan of Warragul, Victoria. However after six children this union was to suffer the same fate as his first marriage.

It is understood that Wells was still a member of the Permanent Garrison Army at Port Nepean in 1914 and was present when a shot was fired at the German Steamer Pfalz as it tried to escape from Port Phillip Bay; this was reputedly the first shot to be fired against the Germans by the British Empire of the First World War. The Commonwealth Government of Australia purchased Wells' watercolour painting depicting this event. It is held in the National Library of Australia collection, Canberra, ACT.

Wells decided in 1919 that the pencil was mightier than the sword and determined to stake everything on his bid for artistic success, disregarded his uniform and went to Melbourne. Within eighteen months he was holding his own in the art world; he joined the Melbourne Herald in January 1922. He also published a book of cartoons and caricatures the same year.

During this time he was also instrumental in the Geelong Victorian Football League team receiving the nickname the "Cats" (Wells always eagerly awaited the opening of the Victorian football season). One week in June 1923 he suggested in one of his drawings that a black cat would give Geelong better fortune against the leading Carlton Blues. Geelong then went on to unexpectedly win against Carlton and won the premiership in 1925 and the "Geelong Cats" nickname very quickly took hold.

Wells popularised his own character, John Citizen. It is believed that he jointly collaborated with renowned author C. J. Dennis and Alexander Gurney to pictorially create the first 'Gunns Gully' characters for Ben Bowyang.

Wells' favourite character was the Prime Minister of the time, William (Billy) Morris Hughes, and in 1926 Hughes opened an exhibition of some four hundred of Wells' original drawings at the New Gallery in Melbourne. Original works were very rarely seen in public.

He married Vera Murray, an artist and daughter of a Melbourne accountant, on 9 February 1932 at Caulfield. In 1935 Wells went to the United Kingdom and worked with Allied Newspapers Ltd, returning to the Melbourne Herald in 1941.

Family folklore has it that he was a war correspondent during the Second World War and went to Italy where he covered the story of Mussolini. In addition, it is believed that he was later asked to work for Walt Disney in the United States; however Wells again returned to Melbourne.

According to former deputy editor of The Bulletin and former President of the Australian Cartoonist's Association, Lindsay Foyle, Wells was forced to retire from the Herald in 1950 due to its compulsory retirement at sixty-five policy (Inkspot, pg10).

Wells was then the contributing cartoonist with The Age through to 1967 and produced a cartoon on a Monday and Friday each week. Often there was a dig at his mates, if not within the actual cartoon, on the bottom right hand corner. Sometimes it was a message for someone who had helped him.

Affectionately known as 'Sammy Wells' by his peers at both The Age and The Herald, Wells was held in high regard in the Melbourne community. People from the man in the street, football and racing club presidents, through to Defence Force Generals and the Governor of the State of Victoria all liked and respected him.

He was a member of the prestigious Kelvin Club of Melbourne and was also a member of the Victorian Division of the Australian Journalists Association.

Sam Wells died on 12 March 1972 at his flat in Powlett Street, East Melbourne, having lived in Victoria for forty-eight years. His wife, Vera, placed a memorial notice in The Age every year after his death, and Richard Berry purchased the majority of Wells' original works at a Melbourne estate auction in the mid 1980s.

Roger Dietrich.