Harold Leslie Thornton, also known as "Harold The Kangaroo Thornton" and the self-proclaimed "Greatest Genius Who Ever Lived" (born 26 August 1915, Enfield, New South Wales; died on 3 April 2004) was an Australian artist.
Harold was the sixth child in a family of seven children. His father was John Nicholas Thornton, a tram conductor (born 1879 Lambton, NSW, died 1942 in Burwood), his mother was Anne (née Burgess, born 1885 Enfield, died 1953 Enfield).
Harold began studying art at a young age, attending both the Orban School of Art and the Julian Ashton School of art. He was prolific and his art career spanned more than 60 years from traditional portraits and landscapes, to surrealist-type art, and some art commentators classify Harold's later works to be in the Naive style, however, Erica Kubic-Vegter, a Dutch art historian, has stated that Harold had many styles during his career and has classified his later bright-coloured "psychedelic" works as Magic Realism. But Harold himself would have rejected any classification of his art and was once quoted as saying ‘…What do I paint: I have many styles, and change to suit the subject. My real painting is psychedelic. I don’t follow the old masters, no, I am one.’. He was an early Australian proponent of using bold, bright colours, and had an influence over artists such as Martin Sharp, Ken Done and Tim Gratton the body artist.
Harold became well known in Amsterdam in the early 1970s. He painted a mural on the 1st cannabis coffee shop, The Bulldog Nr. 90, in Amsterdam which he completed in December 1975. The Bulldog's owner, Henk de Vries, went on to open a string of The Bulldog Coffeeshops thanks to the famous mural on Nr. 90. Many of Harold's paintings adorn the Bulldog Hotel in Amsterdam.
Information sourced from Family History Records kept by Chris Osborne, great-nephew.
References
 | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (October 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
- Britton, Stephanie. "Naive Archive". Artlink. 12 (4).
- Cochrane, Peter (13 March 1991). "That's The Artist On The Right". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 3. Factiva smhh000020011110dn3d004ko.
- Kal, Pienke, The Colorful Life of Harold Leslie Thornton alias The Kangaroo 1915-2004. Eindhoven: Lecturis, 2015
- Schofield, Leo (13 June 2009). "Bob's back in the picture". Hobart Mercury. Factiva MRCURY0020090612e56d0002v.
- Sheehan, Paul (27 December 2000). "Let The Eccentricity Shine Through As We Celebrate Our Nationhood". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 20. Factiva smhh000020010813dwcr00xpm.
- Sutton, Candace (10 January 1993). "Painting From Palette Of Fun". The Sun-Herald. p. 126. Factiva shd0000020011101dp1a000d4.
- Totaro, Paola (18 November 1985). "'Last of punks' brings art to the people". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 6.
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