Documents

Lot 4891    Session 17 (11.30am Friday)    Documents

Estimate $150
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $140

AUSTRALIAN COLONIAL MILITARY UNIFORM PRINTS, in colour (approx 38x52cm), all autographed in blue biro by the artist, Monty Wedd, the autograph being positioned under his signature on the original drawing, includes Ranger, Ballarat Volunteer Rifle Regt, 1874; Regimental-Quartermaster-Sergeant, Tasmanian Volunteer Rifle Regt, 1887; Gunner, NSW Volunteer Artillery, 1873; Trooper - Queensland Mounted Rifles, 1893 (this last image is the cover-piece of Monty Wedd's book, Australian Military Uniforms 1800-1982), together with small printed descriptive sheet featuring the four uniformed soldiers and there units; also Uniforms of the Australian Armed Services, c1960, Golden Fleece swap card album complete with 36 Military Uniform cards as well as 13 spare cards, all different. Foxing on last two prints, otherwise uncirculated. (4 + album + 13)

Montague 'Monte' Thomas Archibald Wedd was born at Glebe, an inner western suburb of Sydney, NSW on January 5, 1921. During World War II he enlisted in the army, later transferring to the RAAF. After the war, he created a French Foreign Legion cartoon strip, Sword and Sabre, which appeared in the popular Middy Malone magazine.

In the 1940s and '50s, Wedd created several comic strips including one titled Captain Justice, the masked vigilante who fought bushrangers and 'righted all wrongs' in colonial NSW. As well as comic strips, Monty produced pulp-magazine covers featuring glamorous, scantily clad women, violent fights, or whatever other lurid scenes entered his imagination and the magazines would then find stories to match the covers. He also created the famous 'Dollar Bill' character for the Decimal Currency Board, used to teach Australians about the new decimal currency that was introduced in 1966.

In 1970 during the bicentenary Monty Wedd drew a popular comic-strip version of Captain Cook's journal for The Daily Mirror. This was followed by another, the Ned Kelly story. Yet another long-running historical strip, The Birth of a Nation, was syndicated to coincide with Australia's bicentennial celebrations in 1988.

Among his many other creations and works, including film animation, Wedd also drew Australian military trading cards for the Golden Fleece fuel company which used them as promotional items to sell petrol. He then turned the project into a reference book published in 1982 and titled Australian Military Uniforms 1800-1982.

In 1993 he was made on Officer of the Order of Australia, for his artistic achievements and for his work as an historian. He received the Stanley Award in 1987 and 1989 and then in 2004 he received the Silver Stanley Lifetime Achievement Award from the Australian Cartoonists' Association. Monty Wedd died at a nursing home at Fingal Bay, Port Stephens, NSW on 4 May 2012.