John Santry
, 1910 - 1990
Illustrator, John Santry was born on December 19, 1910 and grew up in the working class suburb of Pyrmont, Sydney. He attended a strict Catholic school which allowed the children to draw on Friday afternoons. In his first job after leaving school, he worked amongst artists at Paramount Pictures, cleaning the studio artists’ brushes. After studying art part time as East Sydney Technical College, he worked, firstly, as a commercial artist at Paramount Pictures, and subsequently as a black and white artist on Truth magazine. After working in advertising, in the 1930s Santry worked on Labor Daily as a cartoonist.
Santry married Marie G. Byrne (d.u.) and moved to England, where he studied at the Westminster School and shared a studio with, amongst others, renowned Australian modernist artists, William Dobell and Donald Friend.
After several years in the United Kingdom, shortly before the outbreak of World War Two, the Santrys moved back to Australia with their two young children, where John Santry joined the staff of Australian Consolidated Press as a “creative artist”. In the latter years of his career, Santry also taught drawing to architecture students at Sydney University.
There is very little information on his wife, Marie Santry, an artist and painter. It is apparent that they collaborated on the illustrations of this anthology of stories for young readers.
Source:
More info at trove.nla.gov.au (accessed: March 15, 2018)
Bio prepared by Margaret Bromley, University of New England, mbromle5@une.edu.au, brom_ken@bigpond.net.au
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