Tom Durkin (artist)

Tom Durkin
Born	Thomas Coleman Durkin 1853 At sea
Died	29 April 1902 Newport, Melbourne, Australia
Occupation	Artist, cartoonist, illustrator, caricaturist
Nationality	Australian
Period	1870-1900
Signature

Thomas Coleman Durkin (1853 – 29 April 1902) was an Australian cartoonist and caricaturist based in Melbourne, active in the decades before Federation. He contributed to a variety of newspapers and illustrated journals during the 1870s and 1880s, including a series of caricatures of prominent Victorians published in the Melbourne newspaper, The Weekly Times. Fourteen lithographic prints from this series are now held by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. In the early 1890s Durkin was a part-owner with Edward Dyson of the illustrated Bull-Ant newspaper. From 1893 Durkin was employed as the Melbourne cartoonist for the Sydney-based Bulletin magazine, the first Australian-born artist to join its staff. He contributed a regular full-page of Melbourne-themed cartoons and caricatures, as well as smaller format illustrations. Durkin left The Bulletin in 1898, intending to travel to England, but his plans were abandoned through illness. Tom Durkin died of a liver disease in April 1902.