Marjorie Hann makes versatile artistic contribution – from teaching to comics – to Adelaide community
A Majorie Hann watercolour, The Inman Estuary, Victor Harbor. Top right: Hann with her husband George and children in the 1950s. Bottom right: Her comic illusions for the Charlie Cheescake character created by radio personality Bob Fricker.
Marjorie Hann was a versatile artistic contributor to the Adelaide community through the 20th Century.
Born in 1916, only daughter of Mary and William Fisher of Brougham Place, Alberton, Hann was educated at Presbyterian Girls’ College, where she studied art with Maude Priest.
She joined the Royal South Australian Society of Arts as an associate at 15, and in the early 1930s studied oil painting under Leslie Wilkie, Gladys Goode and Ivor Hele at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts in the exhibition building on North Terrace, Adelaide.
Leaving school, she worked as a commercial artist before a full-time job with home furnishers Waterman Brothers on Port Road, Kilkenny, mostly designing showcards and other advertising. She was active in amateur theatricals: acting, writing and set and costume design for the Playbox Theatre. She was a writer on a musical comedy His Royal Highness in 1938. During World War II, Hann left Watermans to work on technical drawings and instructions as part of the war effort, at the Holden factory in Woodville.
After the war, Hann illustrated safety books for children by Kathleen M. Mellor, first director of the Lady Gowrie Child Centre. She worked on a similar theme with comic illustrations for The Adventures of Charlie Cheesecake booklet put out by the Child Safety Council of South Australia and featuring a character created by 5DN/5AD radio personality Bob Fricker. Hann also wrote and illustrated a serious comic strip adaptation of William Makepeace Thackerey’s The Rose and the Ring, serialised in 82 episodes and syndicated throughout Australia.
In another aspect of her versatility, Hann won an essay contest on “What I hate about housework”, leading to a column “Every Woman's Family” that she wrote (as “Helen”) for The News in Adelaide. Hann also had a regular column with Messenger suburban newspapers on regional art exhibitions, and she was art judge at the Royal Adelaide Show for 11 years. She wrote and illustrated several historical articles for The Advertiser.
Hann’s teaching extended to landscape and portrait painting and art appreciation at the Workers' Educational Association for 16 years, and life classes at Kensington and Norwood TAFE colleges plus teaching in country regions including interstate. In 1973, Hann she started tutorials for artists, with 10 established South Australian practitioners leading the classes held with the Royal South Australian Society of the Arts.
Hann continued painting in a reaslistic style from nature well into the 20th Century, with watercolours her favourite median and John Goodchild one of her chief influences. She had two six-month painting trips to the United Kingdom, in 1976 and 1979, each followed by solo exhibition at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts gallery, and a solo exhibition at the Adelaide Art Society in 2009.
Hann had a long association with the Lombard Art Gallery of North Adelaide and Stepney, including six Adelaide Fringe festival exhibitions. She also exhibited regularly at the Pepper Street Gallery in Magill and at Adelaide Art Society functions.
