George Sprod


George Napier Sprod was an Australian cartoonist, for many years active in England, who signed his work "Sprod".

History

George was born in Adelaide to Thomas Napier Sprod and his wife Isabelle Kathleen , members of the Cudmore family, prominent in Adelaide society. As a youth he and his sister Kathleen were frequent and respected contributors of poems and drawings to the Register News-Pictorial's "Sunbeams" pages and its successor, the Sunday Mail's "Sunshine Club". He attended Norwood High School then Urrbrae Agricultural High School, as his parents had expected him to embark on a life of agriculture, but he showed little aptitude for the profession. He attended Art School but may not have completed a year, as by 1939 he was in Sydney, having left home on a bicycle, which he abandoned at Hay to complete the journey by rail. Apart from sales of a few cartoons to Smith's Weekly, he did not achieve his artistic ambitions, failed as a photographer and was sacked after a week's work at the De La Salle Brothers school, so he enlisted in the AIF as a gunner with 2/15 Field Regiment, and sent overseas.
He was one of the many captured by the Japanese in the fall of Malaya and spent the years 1942 to 1945 as a POW, conscripted to work on the Thai-Burma Railway and in Changi Prison, where he developed his artistic talents. A fellow prisoner was the great British cartoonist Ronald Searle; they, and others, contributed to a fortnightly camp magazine The Exile.
After the war he returned to Sydney, where he sold illustrated articles on his experiences to the Australian press, first to the Fairfax Sydney Morning Herald, then to Frank Packer's Australian Women's Weekly. where he secured a position, contributing occasionally to its companion The Daily Telegraph. In 1949 he left for London, where he had work published by various magazines including the News Chronicle, but most importantly for Punch and was praised by Malcolm Muggeridge For twenty years he was one of that magazine's most published artists. He left London around 1969 and returned to Sydney, settling in Sydney's Kings Cross, which at the time had a thriving community of artists.

Family

While in London he married Francine Humphries on 22 July 1961. A son, Douglas Peter Sprod was born in 1962 ; the couple separated sometime before 1968; she died in March 1982.
George was survived by his sister Kathleen Carter and brothers John and Dan. David Sprod, a nephew, inherited and is the custodian of George Sprod's extensive personal collection of his own work and memorabilia.

Publications