Biography
“Northfield was among the most highly regarded poster designers working in Australia in the early-to-mid 20th century. While receiving a number of commissions throughout his career, it is the travel posters designed in the 1930s to promote various holiday and leisure destinations for which he is best known.” (Culture Victoria). Northfield was born at Inverleigh in Victoria in 1887 and educated in Geelong. He served his apprenticeship in Geelong and Melbourne, had a studio in the Melbourne city for 25 years, and was a Director or the Art Training Institute of Victoria.
James Isaac Northfield (1887-1973) was born on Christmas Day at Ellengerrin Station, near Inverleigh in the Golden Plains region of Victoria, where his father, Isaac Northfield, was the overseer of the station. Like many who go on to choose a life of artmaking, James showed a passion for drawing from an early age, with family history notes documenting that, “at the early age of 2 years, James was showing an aptitude for drawing and would draw with the charcoal from the campfires they had on the property, or from his mother’s fuel stove, on anything he could find that was suitable for drawing on.”
When James and his siblings (James was the third child of 13 children) were old enough for formal schooling, the family moved to Geelong West and after completing his primary schooling, James trained under George King at the Gordon Technical College Geelong, where his interest in artmaking and design developed. He then joined the lithographic firm H.Thacker, Printers of Geelong as an apprentice where he acquired the skills and understanding of the practical side of colour reproduction. Well-equipped with this training, James moved to Melbourne as a young man to undertake an apprenticeship as a lithographic artist with F. W. Niven & Co. This company was among the city's longest standing and leading lithographic printers having, in 1873, imported one of the first steam lithograph presses to Australia to begin the production of books.
James Northfield, Lorne, c.1930. Image courtesy of JNHAT archives.
Erskine Falls, Lorne, c.1905, James 2nd LH front row with siblings and friends. Image courtesy of JNHAT archives.
James Northfield, Flinders Street Station, Melbourne, c.1940s, oil on masonite, 22 x 38cm, private collection. Image courtesy of JNHAT archives.
Over his career, James Northfield established a number of art studios across the city of Melbourne. In 1922, James set up his first studio at 312 Flinders Street, Melbourne and specialised in hand lithographic work. He first advertised this business as ‘Artist’, then ‘Commercial Artist’, and in 1924 this became ‘Northfield Studios, Printers’. In 1932, the Northfield Studios Pty. Ltd., moved to 114 Flinders Street (the Smith’s Weekly Building), and James also established a second studio called James.I.Northfield, Commercial Artist, which was located at 130 Exhibition Street. In 1942, I.J.Northfield, Commercial Artist, relocated to 157 Queen Street, while the Northfield Studio address remained at 114 Flinders Street until the late 1950s.
From the late 1920s, James Northfield was also a tutor at the Art Training Institute, Victoria Buildings, 80 Swanston Street (Cnr Collins Street, now the Melbourne City Square), and at a second campus at 50 Hotham Street, Melbourne. James became the Chief Director of Studies at the Art Training Institute in the early 1950s. Apart from the businesses he ran under his own name, James also used printing houses, F.W. Niven & Co. and Troedel & Cooper through the 1930s to print a number of his travel posters and some of the commercial work for well-known brands such as Abbots Stout, Penfolds Wine, Pioneer Jelly and Foster’s Lager. Other Melbourne printers whose names appear on posters based on James Northfield’s designs include Mason, Firth & McHutcheon, Queen City Printers and Northfield Studios &. J. E. Hackett.
For an impression of how a printing studio operated in the inter-war period in inner city Melbourne, see the iconic semi-autobiographical novel by George Johnston, My Brother Jack (1964). This acclaimed novel, with cover artwork by Sidney Nolan, challenged assumptions about national identity and exposed the impact of war. The narrator of My Brother Jack, David Meredith, worked as an apprentice lithographer at the printing firm called ‘Klebendorf & Hardt’. This is believed to be modelled on the Melbourne printing company of Troedel and Cooper, where author George Johnston was actually an apprentice lithographer and his brother Jack worked there as a storeman. Troedel and Cooper, like F.W Niven & Co., where James Northfield was employed as a young man, had a long history of poster printing that was of a consistently high quality. My Brother Jack won the Miles Franklin award in 1964 and was adapted for a ten-episode television series in 1965 with the script written by writer Charmian Clift, who was married to Johnston.
Poster art
“Fine artist and commercial artist James Northfield (1887-1973), was one of Australia’s most celebrated poster artists. James demonstrated a superior understanding of colour techniques at a time when the process of colour printing was still in its infancy. His colour application practices greatly contributed to the development of poster production in Australia. His prolific and innovative designs are built around excellent composition offset by an atmospheric light that beautifully captures the contrasts in the Australian landscape.” (State Library NSW)
Billboard posters were the main advertising medium in the early decades of the 1900s in Australia, with posters plastered alongside railway tracks, stations and other prominent spaces. Between the world wars, a key development shaping the direction of commercial posters in France, Germany and Switzerland was the introduction of the first graphic design courses marking the transition from illustration to graphic design in advertising. In Australia, artists were commissioned by organisations such as the Victorian Railways in the early 1920s and later by Trans Australian Airline TAA. The Australian National Travel Association (ANTA) was established in 1929 and was funded by the Federal Government, Australian Railways, and other shipping and tourism businesses, as well as from sales of the magazine Walkabout, published from 1934 to 1974. Having set-up his studio in the early 1920s, James Northfield’s understanding of the new process of colour printing in commercial art and his trademark mastery of colour, light, and atmosphere, established his expertise and artistic reputation, and he was commissioned widely to design a wide variety of posters.
The 1930s, “dubbed the Golden Age of poster design in Australia” (PROV), was also a dynamic time in world history. The rise of fascist regimes in Europe, the Depression, rapid technological advances that changed public and private spheres, the threat of the second world-war and rapid modernisation, all influenced the social, political and creative concerns of Australia during this decade. Modernism was a response to the austerity of the Depression, and Melbourne was arguably the epicentre of modernism in Australia. In a time of contrasts, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a spectacular design feat, was opened in 1932 against a background of record unemployment in Australia. During this time, ANTA commissioned the leading graphic artists of the time, such as Percy Trompf, Gert Seilheim, Eileen Mayo, Douglas Annand and James Northfield to create many innovative travel posters using motifs of beach, sun, surf, bush and pastoral landscapes, to promote Australia to the world as an exotic destination. Indigenous peoples were, however, mostly absent from these depictions as the Australian Government enacted a policy of assimilation.
James Northfield in Collins Street, Melbourne, in front of the Colonial Mutual Life building, c.1930 Wolfgang Sievers (NLA).
James Northfield, Colonial Mutual Life Building, c.1940s. Image courtesy of JNHAT archives.
In this Golden age of poster design, “three of the most popular and influential artists, Gert Sellheim (1901-1970), James Northfield (1887-1973) and Percy Trompf (1902-1964) were colleagues at Melbourne’s Art Training Institute.…Their posters beautifully combined colourful, often full-bleed illustrations with sparingly used text, mixing sans-serif and elegant art deco typefaces. As Australia suffered the effects of the Great Depression, these optimistic images were hugely popular with the public.” (Natasha Cantwell, PROV)
James Northfield, The Blue Mountains, New South Wales, c.1936. Image courtesy of JNHAT archives.
The initial cost of printing colour lithography posters was high. However, the vibrancy of colour posters, such as the ones created by James Northfield, were eye catching and effective. James created posters of many popular destinations across Australia, such as the Mount Buffalo Chalet (Victoria), the Blue Mountains (New South Wales), Canberra (ACT), Great Barrier Reef (Queensland) and train travel in the Northern Territory. These posters were displayed in travel offices and tourist brochures and used for promotion overseas. Some posters, such as the Blue Mountains poster, were created in two formats, a large poster size and a smaller format, as posterettes. For long-term survival, posters were often backed with linen after printing. James Northfield also ran a separate business called Doylamat Co. which undertook this process.
“Many of Northfield designs are panoramic, three dimensional, with echoes of earlier and contemporary Australian artists’ landscape and city views. However, the colour schemes of his Blue Mountains, two different Geelong posters, or Melbourne, the Garden Capital of Victoria are those of the modern poster, as are the shapes to which the major features have been reduced.” (Holden, 2012).
Apart from travel posters, James designed posters for many iconic products and for major national events, including the 1956 Olympic Games, along with posters relating to political events such as Peace Bonds after World War 1 and recruitment posters, including for the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force WAAAF in World War II, the Red Cross and the campaign against liquor prohibition in the interwar period, which was ultimately rejected by all states of Australia.
The outbreak of World War II led to a suspension of the demand for travel posters and after the War, the poster declined in importance as radio and other media became dominant. The cost of labour-intensive lithography became prohibitive and colour photography and screen-printing gradually replaced illustrative work. By the 1950s, new mass production processes such as the technique of pilot offset, although producing posters that were far inferior and less effective than those created with lithography, signalled the demise of the lithography poster as a commercial art medium. Despite being overtaken by new technologies, the rich tones and textures of lithographic posters provide significant historical and cultural images that endure beyond the printing stone and the influence of the Golden Age of poster design continues to influence artists today. (National Gallery of Australia - Prints)
James Northfield, The Oriental Café, Collins Street, Melbourne, c. 1958. Image courtesy of JNHAT archives.
In the latter part of his career James Northfield focused on oil painting, mainly landscapes and city scenes of Melbourne such as this painting of the Oriental Café in the ‘Paris end’ of Collins Street which obtained permission in 1958 to put 19 tables on the footpath, although alcohol could not be consumed on the street. Mirka Café, opened four years earlier in 1954 by Georges and Mirka Mora, was the first pavement café in Melbourne and the venue for a solo exhibition by Joy Hester The sophistication of outdoor continental style dining did not last long however, as in 1960 the Police Traffic Branch cleared the footpaths of tables citing interference with motor and pedestrian traffic. In 1972 the building was demolished to make way for Collins Place that is still found there today.
