Lloyd, Trevor

 

off topic

Trevor Lloyd

born 21 December 1863 – died 11 September 1937

artist, illustrator and cartoonist.

reverse message dated 19 September 1906

Artist Retires

Mr. Trevor Lloyd

Popular Cartoonist

Herald and Weekly News

Good-Humoured Satire

After nearly 34 years' work for The Weekly News and the New Zealand Herald, the veteran cartoonist, Mr. Trevor Lloyd, has retired on superannuation. Mr. Lloyd lately suffered a severe illness, which hastened his retirement, but happily he is now well on the way to recovery.

Born and brought up in the Auckland Province. Mr. Lloyd has made a unique place for himself in New Zealand humour. His merry drawings of Maori subjects and good-natured pictorial comments on public events have won him countless friends among Weekly News readers throughout the Dominion, and the Auckland public is even more indebted to him for lively cartoons upon topics of local and general interest. His etchings of New Zealand flora are a real contribution to the country's serious art. 

Mr. Lloyd cannot remember the time when he was not making sketches. He was born on a farm near Silverdale, then known as the Wade, where his father. Mr. Henry Lloyd, had settled in the very early days. The elder Lloyd combined a love of country life with a more than passing interest in art. His son's first venture into that realm was made in infancy, when he found and ate a cake of water-colour and had to be given an emetic. 

Weekly News Appointment.
As a boy he began to sketch the scenes and people about him, especially the Maoris, of whom there were many in the district at that time. Farming, however, did not appeal to him, and in the 'nineties, after the death of his father, he removed to Auckland and set out to make a living with his brush. 

The young artist's first commission was to illustrate stories and articles in the New Zealand Magazine, a monthly published by Arthur Cleave and Company. For a period he contributed to the New Zealand Graphic, and in February, 1903; he was appointed to the staff* of The Weekly News. 

Mr. Lloyd's early work for the paper 'consisted of political cartoons in which Mr. Seddon naturally was the most prominent figure. He was also called upon as "special artist" to depict, usually in oils, local events which the limited resources of the camera at that time made it impossible to photograph. Typical of these subjects was a disastrous collision between two electric trams at night on the Kingsland line in December, 1903. Three people were killed in the accident and many others were injured.' The Christmas issue of the paper gave him scope for landscape work. 

Politics and American Fleet 
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904 allowed him for the first time to undertake semi-serious cartooning, but he earned greater public recognition by many political cartoons and. in the local field, at the slow progress of railway construction. When Sir Joseph Ward brought the new title of "Dominion" with him from London. Mr. Lloyd quickly burlesqued the change by showing the Prime Minister in the act of decorating the kiwi with a tail pf eight peacock's feathers. 

The visit of the American fleet to Auckland in 1908 brought out a varied crop of pictures. One represented a tatooed Maori wearing pince-nez and a wide smile and remarking, "Kapail All te same Roosevelt." This greatly amused the American sailors, and a journalist who was travelling with the fleet' used it later to illustrate lectures.

About this time Mr. Lloyd drew a series of very funny skits on early New Zealand history. Each took up a full page of The Weekly News. An example represented an agricultural show in pre-pakeha days, with such exhibits as a first prize fat slave, moa's egg and dried shark (the last judged by its smell). Moas were shown being ridden over jumps in the ring. 

Great War Cartoons 
Perhaps his best-known political cartoon appeared in September, 3911, not long before the Ward Ministry faced its last general election. It was entitled "Will She Weather It?" Sir Joseph and his colleagues were shown in a battered war canoe heading toward an ugly rock, while the shark "Socialism" cruised hungrily near. Three months later Mr. Lloyd provided a sequel, a picture of the wreck with the shark swallowing Mr. George Fowlds, who had dived overboard well before the impact. 

"Under the Shadow," depicting the angel of death over Europe, marked the beginning of the Great War, but the artist was able to get much jollity out of the New Zealand general election which was fought in the last months of 1914. Throughout the war Mr. Lloyd did his share toward sustaining the courage and good humour of New Zealand. The Kaiser, with upturned moustaches and feebly bellicose demeanour, figured in scores of his drawings, along with the Crown Prince, the British Lion, the kiwi and the kangaroo. At times he struck a serious note, as after the triumphs and losses of the New Zealanders on Gallipoli and at. Messines and Passchendaele. When the Armistice came he printed a large drawing, "The Dawn of Peace," in which day rose over a shell-shattered French town. 

Soon after he had the satisfaction of parodying Tenniel's well-known "Dropping the Pilot." The Kaiser and his son were shown descending the gangway at the behest of an angry German soldier, determined to "drop the pirates." One of Mr. Lloyd's most popular war cartoons was a small one drawn when the formation of a Maori contingent was announced. It showed a tribe of tattooed warriors advancing to the fray and yelling, "Where te Kaiser?''

Prohibition Battles 
"In the post-war general election of 1919 and thereafter until his death in .1925, Mr. Massey's jovial face appeared regularly in the drawings. Among fictitious characters which cropped up through the years was the prohibition cat, always in combat with "Spot," the alcoholic bulldog. A variant of this was "Beer Rabbit." chased by the hounds of prohibition, and the beer-barrel and the teapot were often seen in conflict. Kingfishers and native parrakeets [sic] perched on points of vantage helped to enliven many a- picture with their pithy remarks. 

In 1921 Mr. Lloyd began to contribute a weekly cartoon in line to the Herald Saturday supplement. Later he supplied one on Wednesdays also, and eventually his work was mainly in this medium, instead of the line and wash which he had favoured for many years. He drew many dainty border decorations for The Weekly News Christmas number. In these, treeferns, kiwis and quaint little Maori imps with wide mouths and goggling eyes figured very often. 

In his spare time Mr. Lloyd made, and still makes, very beautiful etchings of native trees, plants and birds, and occasionally of Maoris. He was almost a New Zealand pioneer in this field of art, and learned the craft with little help from others. His daughters, the Misses. Constance and Olive Lloyd, "do,very accomplished work in the same medium.
New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22567, 4 November 1936, Page 16

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22567, 4 November 1936, Page 10