During his lifetime, Lionel Coventry enjoyed a high profile — which, for a man drawn to human profiles, was only fitting.
A caricaturist, cartoonist, and satirist, Coventry was fascinated by faces and their lineaments.
His chosen subjects were, naturally, the rich and the famous — the influencers of his day.
"[English playwright] Noel Coward said to him, 'I want to take you back to Hollywood', because caricatures were a big thing in Hollywood back in the 30s," Lionel's son, Roger, said.
"But Dad never wanted to leave Adelaide — he wanted to stay here."
The word prolific doesn't do justice to Coventry's output.
In the course of his career, he sketched an estimated 30,000 figures — mostly for newspapers and magazines, in Adelaide and around Australia.
A mere fraction of that total has now gone on show at the National Wine Centre in Adelaide.
In addition to figures from the wine industry, those featured prominently include lawyers and sports stars — the latter chosen to complement an ongoing parallel exhibition at the State Library of South Australia, celebrating 145 years of the SANFL.
"I love football history, and history in general I absolutely adore," said SANFL history centre manager Chris Halbert.
"I just thought, 'Here is a significant person from South Australia who's not been recognised for all of his wonderful work'.
"I had seen Lionel Coventry's caricature of [former Test cricket captain] Vic Richardson, which is in here, and also the one of [SANFL star] Lindsay Head, and they were just fantastic."
'Like a bloody bullfrog!'
Coventry, who died in 1986, was born in Broken Hill in 1906 but moved to Adelaide at a young age.
He worked as a journalist before making the leap — during an Ashes tour — from words to pictures.
"Dad went down and drew the whole team and came back and it was published on the front page of one of the English newspapers," Roger said.
"That was his big break."
In the decades that followed, the Coventry home became filled to the brim with drawings and sketches.
"We were surrounded by Dad's caricatures because he worked from home [and] there were a couple of rooms in the house that became his studios," Roger said.
"He would have deadlines to drop off all his caricatures once a week.
"[When] we used to go to town for the Christmas pageant with him … people would stop him in the street and say, 'Lionel Coventry!' He was a bit like a movie star."
The caricaturist's choice of career entails certain hazards, and there is at least one tale of someone considering suing Coventry out of disgruntlement at the way they'd been depicted.
"There are stories of people who didn't like it," Roger said.
The venerable, the honourable, the esteemed, the lauded, the accomplished, the bumptious, the po-faced, the retiring and the conceited were all captured by Coventry.
Among those who disapproved was an American military officer, who angrily protested: "You've made me look like a bloody bullfrog!"
But while his work is replete with the elongated noses, protuberant ears, bulbous chins and puffy cheeks that are the basic tools of the cartoonist's trade, Coventry's pen was generally a generous one.
His purpose wasn't ridicule for its own sake, but to provoke the kind of chortling that the subjects themselves could partake in.
Indeed, his sense of humour was such that he didn't spare himself from his own crosshairs, sending himself up in a self-portrait.
In that sketch — which shows a man in late middle-age, his hair greying and his hairline receding — there is the hint of a smirk as the eye glances sideways.
"He was a bit of a show-off, he loved to sketch people," Roger recalled.
"The beauty of a caricature is that it's really about trying to bring out personality."
