Claude Arthur Marquet (1869–1920) was an influential Australian political cartoonist, noted for his bold illustrative style and strong commitment to the labour movement and radical politics.
Marquet developed his artistic skills without formal training while working as a compositor for The Advertiser newspaper in Adelaide. In 1898 he was employed by Quiz magazine as a cartoonist. Marquet moved to Melbourne in 1902. His cartoons were published in the socialist newspaper The Tocsin, as well as publications such as Table Talk and the Sydney-based Bulletin. From March 1905 to October 1907 Marquet was employed by Melbourne's Punch magazine. In about December 1907 he moved to Sydney to join the staff of The Worker (later renamed The Australian Worker), a weekly newspaper aligned with the union movement in Australia. Marquet remained with The Australian Worker until his death in April 1920 in a boating accident.
Marquet was best known for his uncompromising political cartoons, particularly during the years he worked for The Worker newspaper, but his output also included social satire and comic strips intended for child readers. He was a prolific illustrator who worked almost exclusively in the black-and-white medium, his illustrations rendered in bold lines suited to newspaper reproduction. Marquet's dedication to unionism and democratic socialist values was reflected in much of his work (occasionally compromised in line with the more conservative views of his employers). His political cartoons came to particular prominence during the conscription debates of 1916 and 1917 when his work (notably 'The Blood Vote') was used for widely distributed leaflets by anti-conscription advocates.
Biography
Early life
Claude Marquet was born on 8 May 1869 in the copper-mining community of Moonta on the Yorke Peninsula of South Australia, the only son of Charles Marquet and his wife Mary (née McArthur). His father, of French descent, was a painter by trade and a member of a local amateur theatrical group, the Moonta Amateur Histrionic Club.Vane Lindesay (1986), Claude Arthur Marquet (1869–1920), Australian Dictionary of Biography website, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University; accessed 22 May 2024.Family records, Ancestry.com.On Wednesday, June 19..., Wallaroo Times and Mining Journal (Port Wallaroo), 22 June 1872, page 2. Claude's father died suddenly in November 1872, aged 30, "of bronchitis after an exceedingly brief illness", leaving a widow and three young children.Sudden Death, Yorke's Peninsula Advertiser and Miners' News, 19 November 1872, page 2.Family Notices, South Australian Register (Adelaide), 29 November 1872, page 4.
Young Claude was educated at Moonta and Wallaroo, the port town 11 miles (18 km) north of Moonta, in schools associated with the Anglican minister Rev. C. Goodenough Taplin.Moonta Grammar School, Wallaroo Times and Mining Journal (Port Wallaroo), 30 December 1874, page 2.Wallaroo Educational Institute, Wallaroo Times (Port Wallaroo), 23 December 1882, page 2.
Newspaper work
After leaving school Marquet began his working life in the local copper mines.Marquet and His Book, The Worker (Sydney), 18 November 1909, page 21. The young man also worked as a diver and as a labourer on the wharves in his early working life.The full-page picture..., The Worker (Sydney), 2 May 1907, page 11.Claude Marquet, the latest..., The Sun (Kalgoorlie), 1 July 1906, page 7. Later he gained an apprenticeship as a compositor on the Kadina and Wallaroo Times newspaper.Mr. Claude Marquet, Daily Herald (Adelaide), 20 April 1920, page 2.
In 1888 Marquet, aged nineteen, was living at Broken Hill, in the far west of New South Wales, where he was employed as a compositor for the Broken Hill Argus, the township's first morning newspaper. By the end of the year the Argus had been bought out by the Silver Age newspaper. An early indication of Marquet's developing artistic talent was "the famous skull and crossbones picture he produced for the comical 'wake' the Broken Hill 'Argus' staff held on the corpse of the defunct morning paper". Following the closure of the Argus Marquet and many of his fellow 'comps' (typesetters) went to Adelaide to find work. Marquet joined the staff of the Adelaide morning newspaper, The Advertiser.Two Men Drowned, Barrier Miner (Broken Hill), 19 April 1920, page 2.The Late Claude Marquet by C.W.C., Barrier Miner (Broken Hill), 24 April 1920, page 6.
It was said of Marquet that he was "born and bred amidst the tyranny and travail of capitalistically-controlled industrial conditions" where he "learnt to know what the wage-slaves were compelled to endure".Claude Marquet by 'R.J.C.' (Robert J. Cassidy), The Australian Worker (Sydney), 22 April 1920, page 10. Throughout his adult life Marquet considered himself to be a socialist, but he rejected revolutionary means to achieve that end in favour of the democratic process.Marian Quartly (2005), page 170.The Laborite's Loving Cup, The Worker (Sydney), 26 December 1912, page 3.
While working as a typesetter, Marquet acquired a sound knowledge of the processes of producing a newspaper.
Claude Marquet and Ann Donnell were married on 16 June 1891 in St. Mary's church at Wallaroo.
Marquet had "an artistic turn of mind" and developed his artistic skills without any formal training. An art-work by Marquet, titled 'Summer Afternoon', was included in the annual South Australian Society of Arts Exhibition in Adelaide, which opened in June 1896. A reviewer for Quiz magazine described the work as "middling".The Society of Arts Exhibition, Quiz and The Lantern (Adelaide), 16 July 1896, page 13.The Society of Arts, South Australian Register (Adelaide), 19 June 1896, page 7.
After the death of William H. Jeffery in December 1896, who had been the managing printer of The Advertiser newspaper for the previous 22 years, funds were raised amongst his fellow employees to erect a headstone on his grave at the West Terrace Cemetery. The headstone, of Italian marble on a granite base and erected in September 1897, was designed by Marquet and incorporated elements of "the material used in the printers' craft".The headstone erected..., Quiz and The Lantern (Adelaide), 7 October 1897, page 6.The Late Mr. W. H. Jeffrey, The Express and Telegraph (Adelaide), 17 September 1897, page 3.
In a review in Quiz magazine of the 1897 Society of Arts Exhibition in Adelaide, the writer commented that "Mr. Claude A. Marquet can hardly be said to have made much advance in his art".Society of Arts Exhibition, Quiz and The Lantern (Adelaide), 14 October 1897, page 3.
Quiz magazine
In early 1898 Marquet found his first regular employment as an artist for the weekly Adelaide magazine Quiz, replacing John H. Chinner who had left to join the newly established magazine The Critic.Joan Kerr (1996), John Henry Chinner, Design and Art Australia Online website; retrieved 24 May 2024. Chinner's final cartoons for Quiz were published in December 1897. Marquet's cartoons and caricatures began to be regularly published in Quiz from early February 1898.Poetry Pictorially Applied No. 25, Waiting the Signal and A Musician, Quiz and The Lantern (Adelaide), 3 February 1898, pages 8, 9, 13. For many of his early cartoons Marquet worked directly onto wood or copper and prepared the surfaces for reproduction by carving or etching the material himself.
The Quiz issue of 7 June 1900 included a special supplement featuring a portrait of Lord Roberts which was reproduced by color photography from a watercolour painting by Marquet. The fine art print, engraved by Mather & Hanks and printed by Hussey & Gillingham, was described as being "the first of its kind ever executed in South Australia". Lord Roberts, as commander of the British forces in the Second Boer War, had been a celebrated figure in the news after a series of early victories in South Africa.To Our Readers and Field-Marshall Lord Roberts, Quiz (Adelaide), 7 June 1900, pages 8, supplement. Marquet's sympathetic portrait of Roberts could be compared to the artist's more cynical cartoon in the same issue of Quiz, 'John Bull Gathers in the Fruits of Victory'.John Bull Gathers in the Fruits of Victory, Quiz (Adelaide), 7 June 1900, page 8.
In addition to his work for Quiz, Marquet also contributed illustrations to Adelaide's Sporting Life.Joan Kerr (1996), Claude Arthur Marquet, Design and Art Australia Online website; retrieved 22 May 2024. During 1900 Marquet also had cartoons accepted by The Bulletin magazine in Sydney.See examples: More Joy in Heaven!, The Bulletin (Sydney), 10 February 1900, page 15; Sticking to His Kopje, The Bulletin (Sydney), 3 March 1900, page 11.
Marquet and fellow cartoonist Ambrose Dyson (who was on the staff of the weekly Adelaide magazine The Critic) were members of the Corkscrew Club. In April 1901, at the Earl of Zetland Hotel, a "valedictory dinner and smoke social" was held by the club for Oscar Bailey, a club member leaving Adelaide to work in Melbourne. Marquet and Dyson designed and illustrated decorative menu cards for the occasion, "illustrating the Bohemian aspect of the 'convivium', treated in a highly artistic manner".Socialities, Quiz (Adelaide), 25 April 1901, page 14.
Marquet's final cartoons for Quiz were published in November 1901.Topicalities, Quiz (Adelaide), 13 November 1901, page 9; cartoon, Quiz (Adelaide), 20 November 1901, page 9. Towards the end of 1902 he moved to Melbourne.Art Notes by 'Palette', Daily Post (Hobart), 27 November 1909, page 10.
Melbourne
In May 1903 the Melbourne-based weekly socialist newspaper The Tocsin introduced illustrations to its format featuring the work of Claude Marquet. The issue of 21 May included a full-page political cartoon by Marquet on the first page of the newspaper, a feature that was continued in subsequent issues.How It Was Done!, The Tocsin (Melbourne), 21 May 1903, page 3. In the 28 May issue (and subsequent issues) the newspaper's regular columns – 'Topical Echoes', 'Woman's Point of View', 'Concerning Somebody', 'Industrial Items', 'The Organiser at Work' and 'Political Labour Council' – were published with illustrated banners, each of them drawn by Marquet (signed with a distinctive 'c.a.m.').Topical Echoes, The Tocsin (Melbourne), 28 May 1903, page 3; the other illustrated banners appear on pages 5, 6, 7 and 8. A few of Marquet's feature cartoons published in The Tocsin in June 1903 were signed 'Quet', but from the 18 June issue his cartoons were signed with his full name.Lament of the Shades, The Tocsin (Melbourne), 4 June 1903, page 1; Nobody's Dog, The Tocsin (Melbourne), 11 June 1903, page 1.The Brighton Sultan, The Tocsin (Melbourne), 18 June 1903, page 1.
Beginning on 4 June 1903, double-page political cartoons by Marquet were published in the Melbourne weekly magazine Table Talk.Will the ... Realised?, Table Talk (Melbourne), 4 June 1903, pages 12-13. His double-page political cartoons in the body of the weekly journal became a regular feature for the next twelve months.The Week, Table Talk (Melbourne), 23 June 1904, page 2. A cartoon by Marquet was published in the 1903 Punch Annual, Melbourne Punch'''s annual special publication.A Revolution in Aboriginal Architecture Predicted, Punch Annual 1903, 8 December 1903, page 40.