Featuring a hand drawn boomerang and wattle , with the message to Kum Bak to Australia , this is an example of the artwork of Minnie Visick , born l886 , crippled by polio at the age of 10, who died in Victoria , February 3 , l926 .
Emily Minnie Visick lived with her parents and brother Cyril at 78 Donald Street in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick.
In a 2016 article in the New South Wales Postcard
Society journal by Jeff Fitzgerald he said that when he began collecting Kookaburra cards he stumbled across one of two birds sketched in black and white , signed by "Minnie Visick" . More cards turned up over the years , including several of cats, equal in quality to the famous British cat artist Louis Wain who presented felines in numerous anthropomorphic -human poses- playing golf , partaking of afternoon tea , swimming , dancing , playing musical instruments .
An example of Minnie's cat postcards a la Louis Wain is the one below , captioned There is Something in the Seaside Air ,which could be a day out at St. Kilda or Brighton , Melbourne , where they had bathing boxes.
Her brother Cyril had served as a sapper during WWl and received a hero's welcome home at his old school, Moreland State . His mother had died a few months before his return . Fitzgerald wrote that when Minnie died she had been remembered as " a patient sufferer for 28 years". She deserved to be remembered, he added, even more for her postcards.
LOUIS WAIN THE CAT MAN
An example of Minnie's cat postcards a la Louis Wain is the one below , captioned There is Something in the Seaside Air ,which could be a day out at St. Kilda or Brighton , Melbourne , where they had bathing boxes.
On the back of one of her cards was the following information : These cards were drawn by a young woman who is a cripple and she makes her living out of them . Fitzgerald found a 1916 local newspaper report which said that Minnie illustrated gumleaves which were sold for charity at events in Brunswick and the Coburg area.
Her brother Cyril had served as a sapper during WWl and received a hero's welcome home at his old school, Moreland State . His mother had died a few months before his return . Fitzgerald wrote that when Minnie died she had been remembered as " a patient sufferer for 28 years". She deserved to be remembered, he added, even more for her postcards.
LOUIS WAIN THE CAT MAN
H.G. Wells said of Wain (1860-l939) : "He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world." His prodigious output made him popular ; many children's books were illustrated and postcards galore were sold , but his life was dogged by tragedy , his wife died of breast cancer, there were money problems . A trip to New York did not improve his situation and he became increasingly erratic, admitted to a mental asylum , thought to have been suffering schizophrenia or Asperger's Syndrome . Prime Minister Gladstone and H. G. Wells rallied round him .
* Minnie's postcard at the top of this post recently surfaced in New Zealand and has "Kum Bak " to Australia , now in a North Queensland collection full of gems .
* Minnie's postcard at the top of this post recently surfaced in New Zealand and has "Kum Bak " to Australia , now in a North Queensland collection full of gems .
