Francis J. Broadhurst

Francis Joseph Broadhurst (–1999), sometimes called Frank Broadhurst, was an Australian commercial artist who worked as a caricaturist, illustrator, painter and designer. He was born and trained in Melbourne, but achieved his greatest success in Sydney.

He was the theatrical caricaturist for the Melbourne magazine Table Talk in 1936. He moved to Sydney in 1937, and was employed by the Australian Consolidated Press as a caricaturist on the Sydney Daily Telegraph and an illustrator on the Australian Women's Weekly.

He is perhaps best known for his fine art illustrations to editions of Gargantua and Pantagruel and The Decameron published by Angus & Robertson. Twelve of the original pen drawings for the edition of Rabelais were purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1949. Later he turned to book design, and created the dusk jacket to Patricia Rolfe's The Journalistic Javelin (1979).

Illustrated books

Boccaccio: The Decameron. Translated by J. M. Rigg. Illustrated by Francis J. Broadhurst. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1941. Rabelais: The Heroic Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Illustrated by Francis J. Broadhurst. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1951. Henry Turnbull: Leichhardt's Second Journey: A First-hand Account. Illustrations by Francis J. Broadhurst. Sydney: Halstead Press, 1983.