Bill Glenn

William St. John Glenn (1904–1974) was born in Belfast and at sixteen he had his first drawing reproduced in Ireland's Saturday Night. This early success prompted him to seek a career in art. To gain experience, in 1919, he entered the Artists' Department in a small publishing house, Graham & Heslip Ltd., and for over five years illustrated countless booklets, and did figure sketches in black and white and colour.

In May 1926, at the age of 21, Glenn saw his own strip cartoon called "Oscar" appear daily in the Belfast Telegraph. "Oscar" featured a little man with a long nose who wore the baggy trousers of the period known as Oxford bags. In August the Belfast Telegraph appointed him to its editorial staff. The same year, at a Halloween party, he met his future wife, Dorothea, and soon his strip cartoon character "Oscar" had a glamorous wife inspired by the real person. "Oscar" was subsequently syndicated in South Africa and Australia. While with the Belfast Telegraph Glenn became a member of the Institute of Journalists, and wrote his own column on topical subjects under the pseudonym "The Gay Philosopher". He also had the opportunity to be involved in experimental press photography.

In 1931, Glenn was elected a member of the Ulster Academy of Art and on 23 January 1936 elected a full Academician and Vice-President. In 1931 the first exhibition of the Ulster Academy of Art was opened in the Municipal Art Gallery, Belfast. Glenn exhibited two watercolours and over the coming five years he exhibited mainly watercolours and oil paintings. His subjects varied from portraits and landscapes to markets, a printing press and Gipsy scenes. He also exhibited in the Royal Hibernian Academy exhibition in Dublin in 1936. He was happy to talk to community groups about his work and enjoyed organising the annual Ulster Arts Ball. He was elected a Member of the Order of Honorary Academicians of the Royal Ulster Academy on 12 January 1968, which entitled him to use the letters R.U.A. after his name.

Dublin Opinion was a humorous monthly magazine established in the early days of the Irish Republic and William St. J. Glenn was contributing cartoons from 1928, signed "W. St John." Over the next forty years he contributed cartoons often portraying glamorous, sophisticated young men and women, but alongside these, from 1938 he produced a full page scraperboard drawing of country folk in a mythical village called "Ballyscunnion". "It was an encapsulation of every village and villager of the time with all their idiosyncrasies and all their foibles." So wrote Pat Donlon. In drawing "Ballyscunnion" Glenn used a scraperboard covered in white china that could be inked black and scratched, giving an effect rather like a woodcut. "Rarely can the medium have been more brilliantly used," said Charles E. Kelly, the editor of Dublin Opinion.

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