Giddy and guileless Grammar Girls Cartoons

GIDDY AND GUILELESS GRAMMAR GIRLS:

CARTOON CAPERS

Serious dedication to academic, sporting, and artistic achievements forms the backbone of our School and its ongoing history. We recognise the high aims and achievements of our students across the years, with great store invested in the studies and activities of our broader curriculum. Recording this history is important, but should we always see school life and our students through this official lens of our structured intent and public profile as a School? There is another perspective, an underlayer of students portraying daily student lives. When school life is depicted by students themselves, seen through the prism of young women inside the picket fence, we see the humour and the perceptive satire that is also seeded in our students. Their ability to uncover and undo any pretence and hubris brings school life into a realm of fun and reveals the perceptiveness and mischievousness this School has nourished—and even encouraged. Perhaps the best evidence of this sense of playfulness is the plethora of cartoon sketches appearing in various School publications, especially the School Magazine. Cartoon has its origins in Latin. The word cartone was about paper and design on paper. In the 1700s, cartoons came into their own as social and political commentary, in an amusing and often unflattering and subversive manner. Furthermore, cartoon art is a particular form of art drawing. The cartoon form does not aim to replicate reality except as a means of flipping that reality to show an underside of truth that could be unsettling to the viewer but is also offset by humour.

1984 Unknown artist, BGGS Magazine, Latin p53

What does this show of the Grammar Girl character and her zest for school life? That the School encourages this portrayal of school life is testament to the ethos of the School to validate the freedom and independent thinking of our students. It also speaks to the importance of our liberal education of nourishing artistic practice and reminds us of the centrality of the arts in our curriculum and life. These cartoon sketches also give us insight into School activities, uniform styles, mores of the day, and are a history within themselves of what was worth noting and commenting on in different periods of school life and evolution. They form a broad picture of life inside and outside the classroom, and even in the chaos of the changing rooms. Nothing escaped the satirical impulse of our student artists.

1964 artist Adele Cooper (1964) July BGGS Magazine p27

It is fitting to begin with art in the classroom. There are obviously a range of emotions depicted in students in this classroom with art teacher Mr Timmermans (‘Timmy’)—concentration, boredom, puzzlement, all perhaps to counter the teacher’s apparent enthusiasm. In his time of teaching at BGGS from 1956 until his death in 1974, students were usually taught sitting at specially-designed art desks to accomplish their art practice, not always the best physical approach to draw or paint.

1964 June BGGS Magazine, artist Isabella Richard p23

Drawing and painting were then the mainstays of the art classroom, rather than the wide-ranging and eclectic artwork in current curriculum and times, although former student and artist Isabella Power (Richard, 1966) remembers being offered challenging art projects in this classroom. Compare Isabella’s cartoon with this official photograph.

The Art Studio in the 1960s, now W1.4

As a Year 10 student, Isabella contributed sketches in response to a call out for illustrations to grace School Magazine publications. Her depiction of the art class with Mr Timmermans, in many ways, reveals more than the official image. We are given insights into not only the mood of students but also the dress of the time. Some students can be seen wearing the square neck sports uniform (gym tunic) of the day, while others in full School uniform wear black stockings—part of the uniform at the time, no matter what the season. Hair, if long, is carefully tied in pigtails with ribbons. No hair was to touch the collar of the School blouse.

1964 December BGGS Magazine, artist Isabella Richard p34

In the science class sketch, Isabella comments: ‘It was generally understood that chemistry was about making stinks—maybe an apocryphal kind of terminology—anyway that’s the point of this slightly amusing sketch. A student with a peg on the nose and an apprehensive teacher. I don’t remember if she is supposed to be Mrs Castledine (our Science teacher) or just a generic mistress’. We even see two students wearing lab coats, as was the requirement of the time (Power, 2024). While on the surface, the classroom might have been an orderly space, the sketches reveal the dynamics and personalities that were allowed to flourish in these contexts. And, it is often the expressions on the faces that provide the most amusement.

1952 July BGGS Magazine, artist Elisabeth Cummings p28

Music in all its forms has long been a ubiquitous component of school life. Who hasn’t been enthralled and inspired by concerts and performances featuring the many choral and orchestral groups in the curricular and co-curricular programs? Here we have confirmation that organised concerts involving choral groups were a fixture of school life by 1931, attended by friends and family. Of interest also is the dress code for these events: white dress . This code persisted into the 1960s with the Annual Speech Day and Distribution of Prizes attended by students in white. For boarders this was also Sunday dress for church.

1931 June BGGS Magazine np

The 1960s ushered in a golden period of clever depictions of Grammar life. One artist, Creina O’Dwyer (1965), was prolific in her renditions of Grammar girls and her sketches featured in many School magazine entries of her time: 1962-1965. Creina was also remembered for her contribution to the photograph album her VID Form class gifted to their Form Mistress, Miss Doreen Thomas .

1965 Miss Thomas separates Christine Steindl and David Purvis by Creina O’Dwyer. Doreen Yeates Album Collection Creina’s cartoon in this instance features the esteemed, yet formidable, Miss Thomas (later to become Mrs Yeates), a teacher of Modern History and a senior Form Teacher. O’Dwyer tells us a lot about the ‘60s and long before, where fraternising with a boy, and—gasp—a Brisbane Grammar School student was strictly off limits. Rules were rules. The lines were then clearly drawn for separation in the laneway of Kalinga Ave as the two schools’ border zone or ‘no man’s land’. Miss Thomas wore a classic 1960s’ hat. So here she is wielding her umbrella to chase away the unseemly behaviour of ‘boy meets girl’ in school uniform within

the precincts of both schools. It must be said, however, that Miss Thomas enjoyed being included in the jokes. For Creina, drawing was a way to record the funny and quirky stories, and exploits of her school friends. Creina would give her drawings away, and now when she meets fellow old girls, she finds they have kept them, which is a delight to her. The sometimes crowded life of a Grammar girl is captured in the chaos of this depiction of the homeward-bound journey by bus from the well-travelled route 23 bus-stop.

1965 Creina O’Dwyer from the Doreen Yeates Album Collection

In her sketch, Creina has cleverly conveyed the students in winter uniform with blazers, black stockings and felt hats—but notice the short-lived pleated winter skirt. Some are active in the chaos, while some are merely looking on, unperturbed by the unconscious duty teacher, perhaps trampled by the enthusiasm of girls eager for home. At the front of the bus, we see the face of the hapless driver, tasked with accommodating so many students and the old fashioned ‘ports’, not to mention the noise.

These cartoons are not only amusing but also full of information, often revealing the aspects of uniform that the girls thought important. We have this sketch by Mary-Jane Hickey referencing the introduction of the sixth form badge , a proud addition to the uniform giving recognition and status to the senior students. This was also the era of short skirts, sometimes exposing ungainly knees.

1966 Artist Mary-Jane Hickey from the Doreen Yeates Album Collection

Artist Helen Barker may be seeking in this sketch to give us an insight into how the first-year Grammar girl felt about her status and uniform, everything too big and a bit overwhelming, even school life that she has yet to grow into. The mirror she is holding might be her way of looking into her future as the ‘growed-up’.

1965 BGGS July Magazine by Helen Barker p62

Mary-Jane Hickey’s 1966 sketch perhaps reveals that future in this rendition of the overburdened Grammar Girl: academic demands in the maths book, encyclopedia; sporting commitments with tennis racquet, balls, and golf clubs; not to mention personal needs as seen in the hairbrush, hand lotion, and an apple to keep hunger at bay. Other students and bits of uniform appear to spill out of oversize ports and perhaps, for the first time, we come across the new style of bag for sports regalia, a precursor of current general school bags, with the School logo clearly visible.

1966 Artist Mary-Jane Hickey from the Doreen Thomas Album Collection

In her 1972 sketch, Mary Williams’ (1974) again speaks to the hard study habits of the Grammar girl— concentration over the desk, notes discarded around her, and even the cat is exhausted from all this studying.

1972 Artist Mary Williams, BGGS School Magazine p11

Back in the day, Health and Physical Education took on many tasks, including attention to posture (yes, that was rated in earlier report cards), and vital swimming and lifesaving skills, practiced in the newly-opened pool at BGGS in 1960. These students may not look enthusiastic about dipping their toes into icy water, but this part of school life served students well.

1965 Artist Gaynor Robinson June BGGS Magazine p35

1965 Artist Creina O’Dwyer from the Doreen Thomas Album Collection

Interhouse Athletics carnivals have long been a feature of school life, whether as interform or interhouse competitions. Artist, Isabella Richard, found these events stimulating content. She commented: ‘I was keen to experiment with all sorts of art styles. I was riveted by graphic designers including the Bauhaus School of Design, where form and function support the main dynamics of design’. During her time in Year 10, the class was studying block printmaking and ‘House Athletics’ shows her use of positive and negative space to create the background crowd cheering on the competitors. According to Isabella, ‘sports tunics and legs flying, magazine rep ready with the camera for a photo finish’ all produce a vibrant sense of movement and being in the moment.

1964 Artist Isabella Richard, BGGS December Magazine p37

Finally, and not least, we have this vibrant 1964 cartoon of an anticipated 1965 boarders’ life of leisure in the confines of their sitting room. The artist, Jill Lang (1965), explained that the sitting room was something new to the Boarding House and it was senior students who lobbied hard for this space and its design, a small concession in the confines of boarding life as it was then.

1964 Artist Jill Lang, December BGGS Magazine p18

Dressed in uniform, both day school and sporting, the depiction of music, dancing, sewing, indoor sport, and spilled coffee give us an inside view of boarding life, with the day girl peeking through the window, perhaps wondering what was happening on this mysterious, ‘other side’ of school life. This treasure trove of cartoon sketches from students across the history of the School provides us with insights into student life in all its dynamics. These clever sketches enrich our history and transport us into the living moments and memories of the School across the years.

Mrs Lorraine Thornquist (Williams, 1967) Manager, Fine Arts Collection

References

BGGS School Magazines 1931, 1952, 1964, 1965, 1972, 1982, 1984.

Doreen Yeates Album Collection 1965 and 1966

Power, I. (nee Richard) Email correspondence 27/05/2024

Moore, C. (nee O’Dwyer) Email correspondence 29/05/2024