Alfred Tipper

Alfred Henry Tipper (12 July 18672 April 1944), also known by the pseudonyms Professor Tipper and H.D. (reported to be an initialism for Henry Dearing or Harold Deering), was an Australian showman, competitive and endurance cyclist, and outsider artist. His combined interests in mechanics, fitness and entertainment led to a long career as a trick cyclist and builder of miniature bicycles. Following his death, Tipper's artistic abilities were recognised by the Australian painter Albert Tucker, who promoted Tipper's paintings in the modernist art and literary magazine Angry Penguins.

Life Tipper was born on 12 July 1867 in the regional Victorian city of Sale to Thomas Tipper and his Irish-born wife Catherine. When he was two years old, Tipper was abandoned by his parents and raised as a ward of the state. In 1874, the Maitland Mercury reported Tipper as living in the harbourside Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo; the young boy received attention in the press after discovering the body of a dead infant in a Belmore park. Later, he found employment at a dairy farm and developed considerable knowledge of mechanics, and in the 1880s took to the new sport of competitive cycling. Despite these hardships, his passion for cycling and "unique capacity for self-advertising" remained undimmed. He died on 2 April 1944 at Royal Melbourne Hospital and was buried in Fawkner Cemetery. Tucker, a self-taught artist (like other Angry Penguins members such as Sidney Nolan and John Perceval), saw H.D. as an example of an artist who hadn't the "disadvantage of training in some socially endorsed art style". Tipper's paintings are now held in major galleries including the National Gallery of Australia and Heide Museum of Modern Art, and his art formed part of the 2005 touring exhibition Raw and Compelling: Australian Naïve Art.