Jack Courier

Jack Courier was an Australian Modernist printmaker, painter and teacher.

Courier was born in 1915 in Elwood, Victoria. As a young man he took various jobs including work as a salesman in country towns.

He studied at the school established by George Bell and Arnold Shore at 443 Bourke Street, Melbourne, which became a centre for modernist art in Melbourne. He exhibited with the George Bell Group in 1949 and with the Melbourne Contemporary Artists in 1952. An early review by The Age art critic of the exhibition of the George Bell Group in their annual exhibition at the Victorian Artists' Society's Gallery, Albert Street, East Melbourne, noted that his painting The Red Chair was, and one by Peter Cox, were works "by younger men that impress."

Like other Australian printmakers, including Fred Williams, Ian Armstrong, Janet Dawson and Robert Grieve, Courier went to study abroad. From 1950 to 1951 he travelled in Europe, then funded by a British Council Bursary returned to England 1954–1956 to study painting, drawing, lithography with Lynton Lamb and Ceri Richards and also etching at the Slade School. On his return to Melbourne, he set up the first printmaking department at Prahran Technical School. Not long after his return he exhibited paintings, drawings and lithographs made in London at Peter Bray Gallery in March 1957. 

His friend and colleague Peter Jacobs organized the acquisition of Courier’s works by the National Gallery of Australia, where Roger Butler, a senior curator remarked that "Jack is arguably Australia’s finest stone lithographer..."

Courier taught at Caulfield Technical College where he introduced the teaching of lithography, at Prahran College, and Swinburne Technical College. He also taught silk screening and drawing at Pentridge Gaol.

Courier was a foundation member of the Print Council of Australia and exhibited with them, including in touring shows.

Later in life Courier married painter Mary McLeish, a member of the Women Painters and Sculptors society. The couple exhibited together and she was frequently a finalist in the Archibald Prize. Mary's daughter was Barbara Courier McLeish (born 1936).

Courier died in 2007.