Norman Alfred Williams Lindsay (22 February 1879 – 21 November 1969) was an Australian artist, cartoonist, sculptor, polemicist, novelist, and amateur boxer."Norman was extremely interested in boxing and was himself an accomplished amateur. He kept a pair of gloves hanging on a nail behind his studio door and boxed whenever he could find a sparring partner. Nat, a male model and former professional boxer, gave Norman lessons in the studio.", Bloomfield, Lin (1984), Norman Lindsay: Impulse to draw. Bay Books p.42. One of the most prolific and popular Australian artists of his generation, Lindsay attracted both acclaim and controversy for his works, many of which infused the Australian landscape with erotic pagan elements and were deemed by his critics to be "anti-Christian, anti-social and degenerate".Tully, Caroline (1992). The Pagan Lindsay. Ostara. GE Vol. XXV, 10. NO. 96, pp. 1–3.
A vocal nationalist, he drew a weekly cartoon for The Bulletin from 1900 to 1958John Hetherington, Norman Lindsay: the Embattled Olympian. As with many artists and writers of his generation he was profoundly influenced by the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and advanced staunchly anti-modernist views as on Australian art. When friend and literary critic Bertram Stevens argued that children like to read about fairies rather than food, Lindsay wrote and illustrated The Magic Pudding (1918), now considered a classic work of Australian children's literature.
Apart from his creative output, Lindsay was known for his larrikin attitudes and personal libertine philosophy, as well as his battles with what he termed "wowserism" (strict moral conservatism). On his death, Lindsay's home in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney was left to the National Trust of Australia and is now known as the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum.
Early life
Norman Lindsay was born in Creswick, Victoria, the fifth child of an Anglo-Irish doctor, Robert Charles William Alexander Lindsay (1843–1915) and his wife, Jane Elizabeth Lindsay (1848–1932). Jane Lindsay was the eldest daughter of the Thomas Williams, an amateur artist, who became a significant presence in the life of his Creswick grandchildren. The Lindsay children were all encouraged to draw. Percy Lindsay (1870–1952), Lionel Lindsay (1874–1961), Ruby Lindsay (1885–1919), and Daryl Lindsay (1889–1976) all became professional artists and drawings by Isabel Lindsay are in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ballarat.
For some years, it was a comfortable life for the Lindsays. Their wooden house, Lisnacrieve, was extended to accommodate the growing number of children, and later their grandfather. Daryl Lindsay wrote of the large vegetable garden, the paddock with a cow for fresh milk, the sitting room lined with books, and their mother encouraging the children to draw.Daryl Lindsay, The Leafy Tree, Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire,(1965) p.41 For some years, Norman had a skin condition that reacted badly to the sun, so he spent more time indoors than his siblings, and drew.Norman Lindsay, My Mask, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, (1969) p.37
Norman described his older sister, Mary, as "the dominant figure of my infant days".Norman Lindsay, My Mask, p.35 He was slow at learning to read, so she read to him.
Career
The comfortable family life of the Lindsays ended in the early 1890s when Dr Lindsay's investments and savings were eliminated with the banking crisis. After Lionel moved to Melbourne on the half-promise of work as an illustrator, Norman pleaded to join himJohn Hetherington, The Embattled Olympian, p.17. In 1895, after Lionel agreed to look after him, Norman left Creswick for Melbourne.
His talent for drawing was soon recognised. In November 1895, the reviewer of the Victorian Artists Society exhibition wrote: "A quaint subject by a youth, Mr Norman Lindsay, has a touch of undeveloped genius about it". Two years later, his brother Lionel, who was the art critic of the The Tocsin, wrote that Norman Lindsay "is the most powerful and original of the younger school of Australian artists. His splendid capacity amounts to genius, and the promise of his early work–he is only 18 years old–should be fulfilled in a brilliant future".
It was a time of both poverty and adventure. The Lindsay brothers became part of a lively community of young artists and writers, which Norman later described in his 1913 novel, A Curate in Bohemia. The book contains thinly described pen portraits of many of his friends including brother Lionel, Max Meldrum and Hugh McCrae. When their friend, Ernest Moffitt died, Norman made the woodcut illustrations for A Consideration of the Art of Ernest Moffitt, which Lionel wrote in his honour.
In May 1900, Norman married Katie Parkinson, the sister of his friend Ray. Their son, Jack, was born five months later. His concern at having insufficient funds to support a wife and child was solved when Katie's brother, Jack Elkington,, took a folio of Norman's drawings to Sydney and arranged for them to be exhibited at the Society of Artists' rooms where they attracted the attention of A.G. Stephens of The Bulletin, Australia's leading magazine. His appointment as The Bulletin'''s cartoonist, which lasted for 58 years, soon made Norman Lindsay a household name.
In 1903, when Katie returned to Melbourne to be with her family for the birth of Raymond.,her second child, Norman and Will Dyson created a ménage à trois with the young artist's model, Rose Soady. Rose later dropped Dyson from the arrangement, which led to ongoing bitterness. The early months of his relationship with Rose were later fictionalised in his 1932 novel, The Cautious Amorist. Later, when Dyson married Ruby Lindsay, the couple refused to know RoseJoanna Mendelssohn, Letters & Liars: Norman Lindsay and the Lindsay Family, pp 54-60.
Norman Lindsay travelled to Europe in 1909, accompanying the newly married Will Dyson and Ruby LindsayJohn Hetherington, Norman Lindsay: The Embattled Olympian, p.p. 76-80. Katie stayed in Sydney with the children. Rose joined him later. In Naples Norman began to draw 100 pen-and-ink illustrations for Petronius' Satyricon.. In London he visited the then South Kensington Museum where he made sketches of model ships in the museum's collection stimulated a lifelong interest in ship models. He found little interest in his art in London; so in 1911, the couple returned to Australia.
Norman was hospitalised with pneumonia on his returnJohn Hetherington, p.95. Because of ongoing concerns for his health in Sydney's humidity, as well as the scandal of his relationship with Rose, they relocated to the Blue Mountains, where he bought an old stone cottage at Faulconbridge. Here he lived for (most) of the rest of his life.
Dr Robert Lindsay died in September 1915. Norman visited Creswick for his father's funeral, and started to think of writing a novel about adolescence and life in this little gold mining townJoanna Mendelssohn Lionel Lindsay: An artist and his family, London: Chatto & Windus 1988 p.134. He also spent some time with his brother Reg, newly enlisted in the AIF, and noticed how handsome he was, and how the eyes of all the girls followed him as they walked down the street.Joanna Mendelssohn Lionel Lindsay p.134.
Reg Lindsay was killed in France on 31 December 1916. Some weeks after being told of his brother’s death, Norman Lindsay received a letter from Reg, dated 29 December, telling his brother to "hit the Hun for six".The letter is held in the special collections of the Fisher Library, University of Sydney. It was published with the heading "A last letter from the killing fields of France" in the Sydney Morning Herald, 11 November 1988.. Norman could not accept the reality of his brother's death. He turned to spiritualism, holding long conversations with Reg via a ouija board. Many of Norman Lindsay's World War I recruitment posters show a square jawed young soldier, looking remarkably like Reg Lindsay.
In 1897 Lionel Lindsay had bought the first English translation Nietszche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, enthusiastically reading extracts to his brother and their friends, including the poet, Hugh McCrae. Now, as he tried to make sense of a world where so many young men had died, but art survived, he wrote a polemic.
Many younger writers, especially poets, were enticed by Lindsay's philosophy, as expressed in Creative Effort. From the 1920s until the very end of his life in 1969, there was a steady procession coming to sit at his feet. They included his son Jack, Kenneth Slessor, Douglas Stewart, Francis Webb and many others undertook the pilgrimage to Springwood. When Jack Lindsay, emigrated to England, he established Fanfrolico Press, to issue books illustrated by Lindsay, in celebration of his philosophy.
In the aftermath of the death of his brother, Norman Lindsay wrote the children's book, The Magic Pudding, basing both the character and the appearance of the hero koala, Bunyip Bluegum, on his late father. The book was published in 1918, the year he initiated the divorce from Katie. On 14 January 1920, two weeks before the divorce was finalised, Norman married Rose. Their daughter, Jane, was born soon after.
Norman Lindsay came relatively late to etching. He was initially taught by Sydney Ure Smith, but advanced his technique under the guidance of Lionel, who even developed a special varnish to work well with Norman's deeply bit fine lines. Norman lacked the patience to print out editions, so Lionel taught Rose how to become a master printer.Rose Lindsay, Model Wife, Sydney: Ure Smith (1967) p.p. 196-7
The bitter quarrel which ended the friendship between Norman and Lionel Lindsay began when Lionel discovered that Norman had incorporated passages from Lionel's adolescent diary into the novel that became Redheap. When the book was eventually published in 1930, it was banned in Australia. The characters in the book are based both on members of the Lindsay family and some of their closest friends.
Many of Norman Lindsay paintings, drawings and etchings are based on images of voluptuous women and mythological creatures. His novels are closer to the realities of his life.
In 1938, Lindsay published Age of Consent, which described the experience of a middle-aged painter on a trip to a rural area, who meets an adolescent girl who serves as his model, and then lover. The book, published in Britain, was banned in Australia until 1962.
Coincidentally, in the early 1930s, Norman Lindsay left Rose in Springwood for a number of years and moved to Bridge Street in Sydney, when he established a relationship with the very young art student, Margaret Coen.
Lindsay was a prolific artist, producing a vast body of work in different media, including pen drawing, etching, watercolour, oil and sculptures in concrete and bronze. Lindsay's creative output was vast, his energy enormous. Several eyewitness accounts tell of his working practices in the 1920s. He woke early and produced a watercolour before breakfast. By mid-morning, he would be in his etching studio where he worked until late afternoon. In the afternoon, he would work on a concrete sculpture in the garden. In the evening, he would write a new chapter for whatever novel he was working on at the time.
As a break, some days he worked on a model ship. He was highly inventive, melting down the lead casings of oil paint tubes to use for the figures on his model ships, made a large easel using a door, carved and decorated furniture, designed and built chairs, created garden planters, Roman columns and built his own additions to the Faulconbridge property.