Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist and painter, was born at Orange, NSW and studied art at Orange Technical College under Arthur Collingridge . While still a student he won local prizes and showed an oil painting at the Royal Art Society’s 1894 exhibition. Moving to Sydney in 1895 [aged 20, acc. Renniks?], he supported himself as a solicitor’s clerk while studying with George [or Arthur?] Collingridge, Frank Mahony and J.S. Watkins and attending Julian Ashton 's evening art classes in 1895-98. He was a member of the Royal Art Society until his death, apart from four years with the rival Society of Artists from 1897. His work was included in the 1898 Australian art exhibition at Grafton Gallery, London.

Garlick drew illustrations for the Town and Country Journal (e.g. 26 April 1902, 40) and All About Australians ( AAA ) and was a regular Bulletin contributor. Norman Lindsay wrote that this 'lugubrious lantern-jawed minor artist’, the butt of Hugh McCrae’s jokes, 'lodged at a dismal little stone house [called Asrahma] half-way up on the McMahon’s Point steps’ (N. Lindsay, Bohemians , p.119). Joke blocks by this 'dolourous and humourless youth’, he sneered, were devoted solely to 'monkeys and dray horses… He had so to speak taken out patent rights to them, and any one criminally encroaching on his patent was instantly excluded from the category of respectable human beings.’ ML has an original 1900 drawing by Garlick of two broken-down horses being led to the boiling-down works (SV* HORS/7).

Although he clearly specialised in gags using birds and animals, monkeys and cart-horses are not really as conspicuous as Lindsay suggested: e.g. (two birds) THE SYDNEY WATER FAMINE.—BAD TIME FOR THE BIRDS. 'THE INVALID: “I’d like a sauté of worms to-day, father.”/ THE OTHER: “Worms, me boy, worms! Why it’s a month since I saw one, an’ then I 'ad ter fight ole Bobtail for it”, Bulletin 7 March 1903, 17. Not all his animals were anthropomorphised. One of his Bulletin cartoons is of a 'newchum’ wrestling with a kangaroo, DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS LOADED . 'NEWCHUM (as the roo kicks him below the belt): “Bai Jove! The familiarity of these beastly Austwalian plague rats is astounding. Perhaps the poor brute is-aw-delirious.”’ It was apparently not particularly favoured by the editor; the large and impressive original (ML Px*D466/42) appearing in a single column on the 'Aboriginalities’ page during 1903 {#1}. Other cartoons on the 'newchum’ and animal theme also appeared in 1903, e.g. THAT GAME CHICKEN . 'NEWLY-IMPORTED MAJOR (looking at pet emu): “Bai Jove! What a wonderful place this Australia is for growing things. Fancy producing poultry that size!”’ 25 March 1903, 16. His competent series featuring Australian animals of all kinds in comic attitudes and situations include a set published in All About Australians and Garlick’s Roos ' postcards published by Harding & Billings. His postcard A Jolly Christmas , featuring two kangaroos on a bench and a verse, was published by Harding and Billings in 1904. Included in the NMA’s Josef Lebovic collection of over 2000 postcards, it was used by the NMA as its 1999 Christmas card. Like most of his b/w work it is signed 'H.G.’, although he sometimes used 'H. Garlick’.

According to the NMA, Garlick taught animal and landscape painting in Sydney. Examples of his oil animal paintings, especially horses, are in the Hinton Collection, NERAM. He also painted impressionistic landscapes. The Last Furrow , with its macabre figure of Death as the ploughman, created a stir when shown with the NSW Society of Artists in 1909 (acc. McCulloch). He died in Sydney a few months later.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007