Samuel Garnet Wells

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Samuel Garnet Wells (2 February 1885 – 12 March 1972) was an Australian cartoonist, caricaturist, artist and draughtsman. Born in North Sydney, he was the son of civil engineer Samuel Smith Wells and Emmeline Wells, and he went to Kiama Grammar School. Over almost 50 years, Wells worked for several publications in Australia and the UK, including the Williamstown Chronicle, Melbourne Punch, Melbourne Herald, The Manchester Daily Dispatch and the Melbourne Age, producing political, editorial and sporting cartoons.

Wells is known for suggesting that Geelong Football Club adopt a black cat as its mascot and nickname, “The Cats,” in a Herald cartoon published on 6 July 1923. In 1919 he drew a series of forty caricatures for the Williamstown Chronicle. After World War I, he joined Melbourne Punch and then the Melbourne Herald as a political/editorial and sporting cartoonist.

He helped bring to life the humorous bush letters “Ben Bowyang” from C. J. Dennis, drawing impressions of Gunn’s Gully that inspired later cartoon work; in 1933, Alex Gurney used similar ideas for a popular comic strip. During the mid-1920s his cartoons were highly critical of the Australian Labor Party and its leader Matthew Charlton. On 17 March 1926, an exhibition of nearly 400 Wells portraits, caricatures and cartoons opened at the New Gallery in Melbourne, opened by former Prime Minister Billy Hughes.

Wells returned to the Herald in January 1941 and continued there until he was retired due to the paper’s age policy. He then moved to the Melbourne Age, contributing a special cartoon every Monday and Friday in the sports section until the end of January 1967. He died at his home in East Melbourne on 12 March 1972.