1906 - 1995

Cedric Emanuel was one of Australia's most productive visual historians, and life at Bondi played an important part in his success. ‘I would not be able to do the amount of work I do … unless I was still having the relaxation of my swim in the surf,’ the Bondi Surf Bathers Life Saving Club life member once revealed.

For nearly 70 years, Emanuel sketched and painted the rapidly changing scenes of Australia from the outback to the inner suburbs of Sydney. Throughout his life he was a regular swimmer and surfer at Bondi, where he was a patrol captain on Black Sunday, 6 February 1938, when a mass surf rescue was carried out.

The artist was born in 1906 in Gisborne, New Zealand, before moving to Sydney aged four. During his school years he began studying at the Royal Art Society under Bondi artist Julian Ashton, and learned etching from Sydney Long. In 1938 he held his first exhibition, winning the etching prize in the NSW Sesquicentenary Art Competition that year.

Much of his working life was spent as a freelance artist, sketching in watercolour or ink. His lithographs and screenprints were popularised and reproduced on cards, calendars and wrapping paper.

The sport-loving artist was also a boxing instructor, wrestler and rugby player. He won the 1929 NSW state amateur middleweight wrestling championship, before retiring early out of concern for his hands.

During World War II he served in the RAAF in New Guinea as an air defence officer in charge of camouflage, and as an unofficial war artist.

Emanuel died, aged 88, in Sydney in 1995, a day before an exhibition of his work opened at the Jewish Museum. ‘No artist throughout Australia's history could have drawn and painted as many scenes of yesteryear, and of buildings and locations that are national heritage icons, than Cedric,’ the then NSW governor, Rear Admiral Peter Sinclair, said at the opening.

His work appears in the National Gallery and National Library in Canberra, the Art Gallery of NSW and the National Gallery of Victoria. He received the Order of Australia in 1981.

Courtesy Bondi Surf Bathers Life Saving Club.