Abe Berry (1911–1992) was a distinguished cartoonist and a lifelong friend of Herman Charles Bosman. A staunch opponent of the National Party regime, he did many satirical cartoons of prominent members of the party, but also found time to depict life in South Africa’s rural areas, and often undertook considerable research before attempting to draw cartoons that had a strong historical resonance. His ‘Canterberry Tales’ (after Chaucer) and ‘Berry Tapestry’ (after the Bayeux Tapestry) illustrations are examples of this. Some of his satirical cartoons were collected in Abe Berry’s South Africa and How It Works (1980). A skilled watercolourist, his drawings and paintings of ‘old Johannesburg’ appeared in Abe Berry’s Johannesburg (1982). He also has the distinction of having been featured in Punch magazine no fewer than ten times. His illustrations of Bosman’s stories appeared in On Parade (1948–1951) and Trek (1949), and one of his cartoons of Bosman addressing a riotous meeting on the City Hall steps has been preserved.
Wilfrid L. W. Cross emerged as a political cartoonist in the late 1930s. Having trained as a civil engineer and architectural draughtsman, he moved into the world of commercial art and broadcasting. He worked chiefly for The Rand Daily Mail and later for The Forum. When Bosman returned from London in 1940 the two both contributed to The Forum, and also worked together on The Sunday Express – Bosman as a chief sub and Cross as the paper’s weekly political cartoonist. He is the most prolific illustrator of Bosman’s Oom Schalk Lourens stories, contributing a dozen works to The South African Opinion between 1935 and 1945. His iconic, cubist-influenced image of two men sitting around a camp-fire on the veld (for “Starlight on the Veld”, The South African Opinion, January 1946) was to feature on the dust-jacket of the first edition of Mafeking Road in 1947. Of his work Bosman wrote in one of his art criticism columns: “He is charged with individuality, with the underlying bitterness of one who, clutching at a star, has found in the end fantasy.”
Donald Harris (b. 1924) studied art during World War Two at the Witwatersrand Technical College under Van Essche, where he met Ella Manson, Bosman’s second wife. After Bosman divorced Ella in 1944, Harris married her, and she became Harris’s chief artistic subject for the short period that the two were together. After Ella’s sudden death in 1945, Harris held an exhibition in Johannesburg at the Gallerie des Beaux Arts devoted almost entirely to drawings and paintings of her. Some years later, Harris remarried and left for Madeira. He illustrated the reprinted version of Bosman’s famous “Mafeking Road” for the December 1944 issue of The South African Opinion, and provided two pen-and-ink drawings for “The Wind in the Tree” (The South African Opinion, January 1945). Bosman wrote in a review column of a Harris show at Herman Wald’s studio in March 1946, “I am fairly certain that Mr Harris does his best work only when he retains and not when he suppresses his sense of humour.”
John Halkett Jackson (1919–1981) grew up near Naboomspruit in the former Northern Transvaal and began drawing scenes on his parents’ farm at an early age. He had no formal education, but demonstrated his artistic talent very early on, his political cartoons first appearing in the late 1930s. He served in North and East Africa during World War Two, providing humorous sketches of army life for The Nongqai. From 1945 he worked as a freelance artist, mainly for The Outspan, Lantern, Spotlight and Personality, the last of which featured his illustrations of some of Bosman’s posthumously published stories in the late 1960s.
Albert Edward Mason (1895–1950) was born in Britain and trained as an artist at St. Martin’s Lane Academy and Birkbeck College, University of London. Apart from a period of service during the First World War in France, he lived in South Africa from 1914 onwards. He spent time on the diamond diggings in Kimberley between 1918 and 1920, but thereafter resided in Johannesburg. A retiring person by nature, he was chiefly a portrait and landscape painter, but also painted oils of Johannesburg’s mining activities in the 1930s and 40s. He was appointed to the staff of the newly established Witwatersrand Technical School of Art, where he taught Commercial Art and Poster design. His work was exhibited as part of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions in London both in 1939 and 1948. He provided striking illustrations of “The Rooinek”, which was originally published in two parts in The Touleier (January–February and March 1931). When he exhibited at Bothner’s Gallery in Johannesburg in 1945, Bosman wrote of him that “there is a lot about his work that entitles him to be regarded as one of the great painters of his time.”
René Shapshak (1899–1988) was born in France and trained at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. He came to South Africa in the mid-1930s and was one of the founding members of the Transvaal Art Society. A well-known decorator, he is remembered primarily for his sculptures that were designed to give the mid-century SABC building in Commissioner Street, Johannesburg, its progressive art deco look. He was considered as one of the alternative artists to those sanctioned by the South African Association of Arts, together with other contributors to the post-war South African Opinion, on which he was a regular. He illustrated “Concertinas and Confetti” for the April 1944 issue of The South African Opinion. In the 1940s and early 50s he provided training to a number of emerging black artists at his home in Yeoville, Johannesburg. In 1953, with South Africa’s political situation worsening, he left the country for New York.
Richard John Templeton Smith (b. 1947) was something of a teenage prodigy, his sharp-edged satirical caricatures first appearing in 1966. Born in Scotland, he came to South Africa with his parents in 1958, and was educated at Queen’s College and Witwatersrand Technical College, where his cartoons appeared in the student publication Wits-Wits. He did freelance work in the late 1960s for The Sunday Express and The Star, before moving to London in 1970. Returning to South Africa in 1972, he produced cartoons for The Rand Daily Mail, The Sunday Tribune, The Financial Mail and The Sunday Express, where his illustrations for a series of republished Bosman stories appeared in 1979.
Reginald Turvey (1882–1968) was born on a farm in Ladybrand near the border of Lesotho (then Basutoland), the descendent of an original 1820 settler. His schooling at Grey College in Bloemfontein was interrupted when he was sent to London for art training in 1903, where he attended the Slade School of Art. He excelled early on at portrait painting, but also did striking landscapes in oils. After a short trip to Japan, he returned to South Africa in 1910 to work on the family farm. When his father died, Turvey went back to England, settling in St. Ives in 1917, where he worked successfully as an artist for the next twenty-three years. He joined the Bahá’í faith in 1935, a belief that he was to hold to (and that influenced his art) for the rest of his life. In 1940 he left war-time England once more for South Africa, where he exhibited and sold his work, his reputation as an artist growing steadily with the passing years. When he exhibited at the Constantia Gallery in 1947 Bosman commented that the “aspect of his work that interests me very strongly at the moment is related to his incursions into a fascinating world of his own, that is midway between fantasy and reality.” His numerous illustrations of Bosman’s stories appeared in The South African Opinion in 1946, and a posthumous selection of his work, entitled Life and Art, was published in 1986.
Maurice van Essche (1906–1977) was born in Antwerp and trained under Henri Matisse. He lived in South Africa from 1940 to 1971. He was a versatile painter of portraits, landscapes and still lifes, working in oil, gouache and watercolour. He lectured at the Witwatersrand Technical College between 1943 and 1945, where he occasionally employed Bosman’s second wife, Ella Manson, as a model, and in this way came to know of her husband’s work. He also taught at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts (University of Cape Town) between 1964 and 1970. From 1971 until his death he lived in Thonon, on Lake Geneva, France. His illustration of one of Bosman’s most famous stories, “In the Withaak’s Shade”, appeared in The South African Opinion in March 1945. He also illustrated “Camp-fires at Nagmaal” (The South African Opinion, June 1945), “Brown Mamba” (The South African Opinion, August 1945) and some of Bosman’s poetry. When Van Essche exhibited at Gerrit Bakker’s Constantia Gallery, Bosman enthused that he was “in a class considerably above the general run of painters who hold exhibitions.”
Henry Edward Winder (1897–1982) was born in London. He served in the Home Counties Brigades in the First World War, but was badly wounded in 1916 and spent nearly three years in hospital. He later attended the Slade School of Art before moving to South Africa in 1920, where he worked on The Rand Daily Mail and The Sunday Times. In the 1930s he freelanced for The Outspan, The Nongqai and The Tatler. It was at this time that he was approached by Bosman and Jean Blignaut (co-editors of the newly launched The Touleier) to provide illustrations for their literary monthly. He duly provided a striking cover for the first issue, and also has the distinction of illustrating Bosman’s first Oom Schalk Lourens story, “Makapan’s Caves”, for the same issue of the magazine (December 1930). He went on to have a long and distinguished career, which included being commissioned to do anatomical drawings for Professor Raymond Dart, the famous anatomist and paleontologist based at the University of the Witwatersrand.