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Robert Emerson Curtis

1898 - 1986

BiographyEnglish born Robert Emerson Curtis (1898 - 1996) migrated to Australia in 1914. He worked on his family farm in Queensland until 1919 when he moved to Brisbane and worked as an illustrator. In 1922, accompanied by his friend Charles Chauvel, Curtis travelled to the United States. There he studied at the Art Institutes of San Francisco and Chicago and worked as a freelance commercial artist. Curtis married and moved to Chicago in 1925 and had a daughter, and worked as an architectural draftsman.

Curtis and his family returned to Sydney in 1928, and inspired by industrial modernism began to record the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. During the Great Depression Curtis briefly returned to Queensland with his family, until he secured work and returned to Sydney. He undertook a range of freelance work, mostly documentary illustrations of architectural construction and heavy industry.

During World War II, Curtis illustrated the Commonwealth munition and aircraft factories, and in 1941 became a Camouflage Officer with the RAAF. As the Officer in Charge of Camouflage in New Guinea, Curtis recorded the activities of the Australian and American troops.

In 1945 he was appointed an official War Artist and recorded Australia's industrial wartime production. Passionate about industrial modernism, Curtis was particularly interested in illustrating naval shipbuilding. Robert Emerson Curtis died in 1996.

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