Joe Jonsson

Who was Joe Jonsson?

Nils Josef Jonsson was an Australian cartoonist born in Halmstad, Sweden.

At age 18 he went to sea for nine years, painting in his spare time. In 1915 he "jumped ship" in New Zealand where he worked for a while, then in Australia, finally settling down in Sydney where he studied painting full-time from 1918 to 1920 at the studio of John S. Watkins, becoming an instructor himself within a year. He worked as cartoonist with Smith's Weekly from 1924 to 1950 when it closed; the last artist still on staff. His jokes mostly centred on what he knew best: horses, ships and drunks.

Though he produced many gag panels for Smith's Weekly, he is best remembered for "Uncle Joe and his Horse Radish", a coloured strip which first appeared January 1951 in Keith Murdoch's Sunday Herald, later Sun-Herald and was carried by other News Limited papers including Adelaide's Sunday Mail. It revolved around the splay-footed racehorse and its owners Joe and his wife Gladys, children Oigle and Doigle, their jockey cousin Manfred and the colourful characters of the racecourse - gamblers, drunks, bookies, nobblers, touts, society belles and so on.