Dunlop, Bonar

About

Bonar Dunlop was born John Bonar Dunlop in 1916, in Dunedin, New Zealand, where his family farmed. He learned to ride, and was a decent horseman.

In 1946, he went to live in Sydney, where he met and married an Englishwoman. He studied art and sculpure at the East Sydney Technical College, and was the subject of a portrait by one of his sculpture tutors, Arthur Murch. The portrait won the 1949 Archibald Prize for portraiture in Australia.

In 1958, the family came to London, where Bonar worked as an illustrator, working on campaigns for clients such as Harrods.

His Jill books were a relatively rare excursion into children’s book illustration

Bonar Dunlop drew Black Boy as a piebald, rather than his original black. He thereby coloured (literally) many people’s perceptions of the pony. I have not been able to find out whose idea it was to make Black Boy piebald, but the text of the books was altered to suit Black Boy’s new colour. Black Boy’s name was altered to Danny Boy in the very first edition of Jill’s Gymkhana that Bonar Dunlop illustrated (Knight 1968) so perhaps the name change was put in place to reflect the change of colour. If so, it was not terribly long-lived. Danny Boy reverted to Black Boy in the next book, A Stable For Jill, which must have puzzled that edition’s readers. Black Boy was also known as Black Boy in every succeeding edition of the books.

I don’t know whether Bonar Dunlop did covers for all the titles in the series: I’ve only ever seen five, but there might well be more. The five were:

• Jill’s Gymkhana (cover and internal illustrations)
• A Stable for Jill (cover and internal illustrations)
• Jill Has Two Ponies (cover and internal illustrations)
• Jill’s Riding Club (cover only)
• Jill and the Perfect Pony (cover only)

He only did internal illustrations for the first three titles. The remaining titles kept their original Caney illustrations.

Jill as illustrated by Dunlop is a much more sophisticated character than in her Caney incarnation. She certainly looks a true child of the sixties, which is when the illustrations were done. I like these illustrations – they certainly have a lot of verve.

Bonar Dunlop worked both as an illustrator and a sculptor, and started doing sculptures of rugby players after watching Saracens play in 1975. From the 1970s he became a full-time sculptor. One of his more notable rugby statues was one of Gareth Edwards, which was unveiled in 1982 in Cardiff.

Producer and All Black, Grahame Thorne, has supplied me with the pictures shown below of some of Bonar Dunlop’s sculptures. He met Bonar Dunlop when filming a documentary in the UK on the fifth Lions Tour. He said:

While there I befriended Bonar Dunlop, a fellow Kiwi, and I bought (he wouldn’t take an All Black jersey) the sculpture seen below… Bonar and I corresponded for a few years but our paths never crossed again. He also sold me a rugby interactive [three interlocking figures] which my children had years of fun with.

Dunlop died in Sussex in 1992.

Links and sources
Fiona Dunlop
Grahame Thorne. Photographs of sculptures © Grahame Thorne
Portrait of Bonar Dunlop (winner of the Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of NSW
Bonar Dunlop’s sister, Shona Dunlop MacTavish at the Otago Daily Times
Photo of Gareth Edwards statue at Immortals of British sport
Bonar Dunlop on Wikipedia