Percival Albert Trompf - known universally as Percy - was an artist and illustrator with a career spanning 40 years. Although he died at the relatively young age of 62, Percy Trompf had a major influence on the style and success of advertising campaigns in Australia, and his style is still readily recognisable though much copied.

Percy Trompf was born in the early years of the federation at Beaufort in 1902. The youngest of nine children, his grandfather Charles (born Carl August Trompf in Prussia) was present at the Eureka Stockade; his father was a fruiterer and merchant in Ballarat.

He was educated at Sebastopol State School and then Ballarat School of Mines Junior Technical School, undertaking the Technical Art School Industrial Design Course in 1916. Active in the social life of the SMB, he was secretary of the SMB Students' Association and edited the student magazine.

He was soon working in Melbourne for the advertising and art firm Giles and Richards, before establishing his own business in Little Collins Street. A master of colour and light composition, Trompf's work came to the attention of the Victorian Railways Betterment and Publicity Board chairman Charles Holmes.

Holmes was a controversial figure. An unabashed supporter of the White Australia Policy who believed the Indigenous people were destined to be 'effaced' from history, he nevertheless had no compunction in using their images and stories to promote tourism, selling them as 'the finest models of human proportion'.

Working for the brilliant Harold Clapp, head of Victorian Railways for 30 years, Holmes became aware of the successful and innovative integration of advertising, design and typography Frank Pick's London Underground had introduced and approached Trompf to design Australian travel posters along the same lines.

A relentless promoter of tourism, then in its infancy but rapidly growing with both the expansion of rail services interstate and a boom in car ownership, Holmes commissioned Trompf to make posters encouraging travel, commemorating pioneer events and reinforcing public safety around transport.

Some of Trompf's early commissioned work for the Victorian Railways included "The holiday spirit, Mt. Buffalo National Park"; "Take a day at the seaside: go down by train!"; "See the Better Farming Train"; and "Australia calls you: settler, investor or tourist".

As managing director of the Australian National Travel Association (ANTA) Holmes continued to source work from Trompf for tourism campaigns throughout the 1930s. The ANTA, funded through government utilities such as state tourist agencies and railways, and private businesses including shipping companies and hoteliers, was a semi-autonomous, semi-government instrument which aimed to market Australia as an international tourism destination as well as promote internal travel. As such it was the predecessor of the Australian Tourism Commission and subsequent bodies.

Trompf's work and that of his contemporaries was designed to celebrate outdoor life and the joys of fitness, bushwalking, beach culture and the consumption of 'healthy Australian-produced' foods such as fruit. It was unashamedly patriotic and celebratory of white

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