Hall Thorpe

John Hall Thorpe (1874 – 1947) was born in Sandridge, Victoria.

Thorpe studied at the Society of Arts and worked for a short while at the Illustrated Sydney News. He learned the craft of woodblock engraving as an apprentice on John Fairfax’s Sydney Mail from 1891.

He was a member of the (Sydney) Society of Artists. During this time he contributed illustrations to several books, published a children’s colouring book and a chapter in a book on interior design. His work appeared in magazines around the world.

In 1898 he had several paintings in the Grafton Galleries’ Exhibition of Australian Art in London, and in the early 1900s left for England. Here he attended Heatherley’s School of Art and developed a distinctive style of coloured woodcut prints.

His woodblock prints were created using different blocks for each colour. A Country Bunch was possibly the largest woodblock colour art print published (at that time – early 1920s).

He did the engraving, printing and publishing from his studio at 36 Redcliffe Square, and gallery at 32 Sussex Place, South Kensington.

Most of his woodblock prints are not numbered in order to not limit the number he could produce. They were sold widely in England, the USA and France.

During the 1920s and 30s, Thorpe became a household name in the field of home decoration, and his work was a strong influence on fashions in wallpaper design. He was interested in creating affordable art and design that could be enjoyed by working class families in their homes.

His work is held in the collections of the Contemporary Art Society, British Royalty and the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.