Norman Lindsay, (1879 - 1969)
Detail; Rita
Oil on canvas on board
38.3 x 33.3 cm
Private collection
Norman Lindsay, (1879 - 1969)
Rita
Oil on canvas on board
38.3 x 33.3 cm
Private collection
Norman Alfred William Lindsay (22 February 1879 – 21 November 1969) was an Australian artist, etcher, sculptor,
writer, editorial cartoonist, scale modeller, and an accomplished amateur
boxer.
NORMAN LINDSAY, (1879 - 1969)
A PENSIVE MOOD, c.1935
Oil on canvas
53.5 x 66.5 cm
Private collection
'I've always used a very simple principle to get the best out of my models, and that is to build up their feminine self-esteem by flattery. They burgeon under it. It even affects their colouring, the brightness of their eyes, the assurance with which they take their pose ... Quite apart from the policy of making them feel pleased with themselves, I always felt that I owed them a considerable debt of gratitude. They are a supremely important content of my works.'
Lindsay's desire for technical excellence across painting, drawing and printmaking was matched by his determination to joyfully and controversially rail against the puritanical. Opposed to the chaste, stylised nudes of the decorative ilk, Lindsay declared, 'I have utterly repudiated the academic nude image of femininity as an innocuous stuffed dummy'. Instead, he painted women of vitality, highlighting their self-awareness alongside their sensuality. This is perhaps most evident in his portraits, that don't have the decadent theatricality of his mythically inspired scenes. More on this painting
In 1895,
Lindsay moved to Melbourne to work on a local magazine with his older brother
Lionel. In 1901, he and Lionel joined the staff of the
Sydney Bulletin, a weekly newspaper, magazine and review. His association there
would last fifty years.
NORMAN LINDSAY, (1879 – 1969)
THE CURTAIN, c. 1921
Watercolour on paper
65.5 x 51.5 cm
Private collection
Curtains are suggestive. They hide what is behind them. When drawn, curiosity and expectation are replaced by the excitement of the presentation. In this watercolour The Curtain, 1921, by Norman Lindsay, a feast of visual beauty is revealed as dwarfs pull aside the heavy drapes. The sense of theatre is palpable as the ladies present themselves on their very private stage. With the performance about to begin, the audience, alias the viewer is invited to join in. Narrative in Lindsay’s art unfolds through the eyes and gestures of his players, highlighted by theatrical effects and presentations. Fascinating of eyes, these ladies look outside the picture to fix on members of the audience. Only the dark lady of the far right engages the viewer directly with coquettish look and invitation. This she confirms by her fan and its own flirtatious language. The fan held open in the left hand was an invitation to engagement.
As so often in Lindsay’s art, the composition centers on the statuesque nakedness of the single female figure. For The Curtain, the model was Lindsay’s wife Rose, his favourite. In recollection, Lindsay wrote of Rose: ‘Finally, as the feminine image was the central motif of my work, she dramatized it for me in the flesh under terms which involved me in all its emotional complexities, lyrical and demonical’. More on this painting
NORMAN LINDSAY, (1879 - 1969)
PIERROT AND HARLEQUIN, c.1928
Oil on canvas
66.0 x 51.0 cm
Private collection
Characters of the theatre often found their way onto Norman Lindsay's canvasses, Pierrot and Harlequin being two of his favourites. Pierrot, the buffoon figure of mime and the Commedia dell'Arte, was traditionally dressed in a loose white costume with large buttons as fitting the character of the sad clown. He was hopelessly in love with Columbine. When she leaves him for Harlequin, another stock character of the Commedia Dell'Arte, she breaks his heart. Harlequin, the acrobatic trickster, in contrast is distinguished by his colourful, diamond-patterned costume. Both appear to left and right of Lindsay's central image of feminine beauty and desire. Other exotic costuming, lighting and frolicking good fun suggest a moment of theatre. Even the pale and melancholic Pierrot, so often the butt of others pranks, is involved through physical support and presentation by gesture of the main character. At her feet there lies a large egg, long a symbol for arcane beliefs to do with creation, spring and fertility. In Christianity it is the symbol of the Resurrection. More on this painting
Norman Lindsay, (1879-1969)
Merchandise, c. 1941
Watercolour
66 x 55 cm
Private collection
Lindsay's fascination with the exotic bazaars of the Orient is evident in the number of pen drawings, oils, etchings and watercolurs he produced throughout his life. In all of these, Lindsay reworks similar elements of elephants, camels, merchants of fine goods, slaves and of course, beautiful nudes. The etching Merchandise (1938) and a later pen drawing also called Merchandise (1967) show similarities in composition with this 1941 watercolour.
Here, the central female nude, reclining on a richly draped dais, is looking at the merchant's proffered goods, while he and his entourage are obviously fascinated by her luminous pale beauty. Her equally beautiful companions do not detract from her almost regal pose. Lindsay seems to convey an almost disdainful look on this face in all his Merchandise compositions. Perhaps this is to make us aware that this woman is not a slave, but indeed a woman of substance who must be wooed with the finest of the merchant's goods.
More on this painting
Lindsay
travelled to Europe in 1909. In Naples he began 100 pen-and-ink illustrations
for Petronius' Satyricon. Visits to the then South Kensington Museum where he
made sketches of model ships in the Museum's collection stimulated a lifelong
interest in ship models. The Lindsays returned to Australia in 1911.
NORMAN LINDSAY, (1879 – 1969)
Adventure, c. 1944
Oil on canvas
89 x 76.5 cm
Private collection
Adventure (1944) by Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) is remarkable inasmuch as it is one of the very few works to feature a male nude. Leaning over from a rearing horse towards a naked female with golden tresses, he is a phallic vortex around which the movement within the picture is created. Lindsay balanced our hero’s nudity against the prominent female nudes, for which the artist is better known. They display his aesthetic preference for ‘well-endowed’ and thick-thigh maidens that are at odds with the prevalent waif-like ideal of his era. When a model complained about her appearance in one of his sketches that was clearly at odds with her own bodily proportions, the artist is believed to have quipped: “You’ll grow into them, my dear.” More on this painting
NORMAN LINDSAY, (1879 – 1969)
Sirocco, c. 1941
Oil on canvas
77 x 83 cm
Private collection
Sirocco is a Mediterranean wind that comes from the Sahara and can reach hurricane speeds in North Africa and Southern Europe, especially during the summer season.
NORMAN LINDSAY, (1879 – 1969)
ONWARDS!, c. 1967
Watercolour on paper
55.0 x 60.0 cm
Private collection
This ambitious later work presents an extraordinary array of Norman Lindsay’s characters, ranging from cavalier on horseback, to pirates, buccaneers, naval officers and scallywags as a crowded backdrop to the central helmet-clad Amazon nude figure. With horn blowing and drumbeating dwarf figures in the foreground the central figure with raised arms leads the parade in a chorus-like victory celebration.
The domination of a triumphant central female figure is a common theme throughout Norman Lindsay’s art. Throngs of historical characters typically fill the backgrounds and sometimes encircle the main figure as seen in the major examples: The Prize, c.1937 (private collection); Amazons, 1939 (The Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum); Crete, 1940 (The University of Melbourne Art Collection); Homage to Balzac, 1941 (The University of Melbourne Art Collection).
‘All his life Norman read and re-read Pepys’ diaries... 'I’ve been reading my old friend Sam Pepys again, starting from Vol 1 as I always do, and so on to Vol 8. What a lot I owe that book in entertainment. There’s so much in it to enliven one’s detective faculties in following out the infinite complications in affairs, and detecting motives behind the conflicts of personality in the Navy office...’. More on this painting
Norman Lindsay
Captured, c. 1938
Oil on canvas
159 x 129.5 cm
Private collection
Norman Lindsay
Ladies for Ransom, c. 1939
Oil on canvas
156 x 124.5 cm
Private collection
Ladies for Ransom is a tour-de-force, full of buxom ladies and lustful pirates of all kinds and degrees. Lindsay was fascinated by the romance of the high seas and the cut-throat buccaneers who plied its waters. Equally, his art dwelt on abduction and seduction, where bare-bosomed beauties are at the mercy of these seafaring vagabonds. In Ladies for Ransom, the chief pirate is dressed in the style of a Royalist cavalier, those romantic figures from the seventeen-century who fought so gallantly against the Roundheads of Cromwell and his pleasure-denying Puritans. Longhaired, mustachioed, breastplate of metal and a scarlet sash around his waist, he takes the hand of the black-haired beauty who, with her other ladies, seems a little taken aback by the events. They are in all states of déshabillé, as the metaphorical dark clouds of the passionate struggle give way to blue skies and sunshine.
Lindsay knew well that the partly clad female was equally if not more enticing that the fully presented nude. And he was broadminded in his choice - Nordic blondes, dark haired senoritas, Negro beauties from Africa - all bounteous front and backsides. The buccaneers come off second best, ranging from the debonair main figure, through various stages of grimness to the hairy Neanderthal on the lower right. A keg of rum is rolled in and the festivities are about to begin, for not all the ladies seem averse to the situation in which they find themselves. To the left, palm trees arch gracefully upwards, the prominent blue-tailed parrot adding another exotic touch. The two full-sailed ships to the left add more touches of romantic glamour to this pageant of expected pleasure. More on this painting
NORMAN LINDSAY, (1879 - 1969)
PIRATES RETURN, c.1940
Watercolour on paper
76.0 x 57.0 cm
Private collection
In Pirates Return, Lindsay extended the excitement and heightened the drama further by keeping the two groups of figures apart through the use of a powerful angle. Men are separated from women, desire from fulfillment. To the urgency that fills the avalanche of piratical figures, the women react with the agitation of those disturbed from slumber and more peaceful times. Cleverly, the gulf of expectation is bridged only by the man, the viewer, in the corner with a foot in both camps.
Lindsay leaves nothing unexplored in his imaginings of beauty and the bounty that is the lucky pirate's lot. Beside those vessels of silver and gold, these other vessels of pleasure disport unclad or draped in wraps sumptuous to the eye. Looks of shock, horror and delight - raised eyebrows, pouting lips, and lustful stares - set up a dialogue within the picture to enthrall the most ardent Lindsay connoisseur. No sensuous and inviting part of the female form is overlooked as Lindsay provides the welcome home to cheer the heart of any pirate. In his generosity Lindsay invites the viewer to participate by the use of a clever compositional ploy. Disposing the figure of the lower parts to the foreground right, he opens the way for the viewer to step into his shoes. This curiously inviting twist and corresponding play of perspective, opens up the adventure for all to share. More on this painting
NORMAN LINDSAY, (1879 - 1969)
THE AMAZONS, c.1930
Watercolour on paper
56.0 x 53.0 cm
Private collection
The legendary Amazons were thought to have lived in Pontus, which is part of modern-day Turkey near the southern shore of the Black Sea. There they formed an independent kingdom under the government of a queen named Hippolyta or Hippolyte. This area is known to have been occupied in the Late Bronze Age by a transhumant group known to the Hittites as the Kaŝka; though they were not directly known to Greeks, modern archaeologists have determined that they finally defeated their enemies, the Hittites, about 1200 BC. According to Plutarch, the Amazons lived in and about the Don river, which the Greeks called the Tanais; but which was called by the Scythians the "Amazon". The Amazons later moved to Terme on the River Thermodon, northern Turkey. More on the Amazons
Norman Lindsay
Race of the Centaurs
Oil on Canvas
42x44cm
Private collection
A centaur is a mythological creature with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a horse.
The centaurs were usually said to have been born of Ixion and Nephele (the cloud made in the image of Hera). Another version, however, makes them children of a certain Centaurus, who mated with the Magnesian mares. This Centaurus was either himself the son of Ixion and Nephele (inserting an additional generation) or of Apolloand Stilbe, daughter of the river god Peneus. In the later version of the story his twin brother was Lapithes, ancestor of the Lapiths, thus making the two warring peoples cousins. More on the Centaur
Lindsay
wrote the children's classic The Magic Pudding which was published in 1918.
Many of his novels have a frankness and vitality that matches his art. In 1938,
Lindsay published Age of Consent.
Spring's innocence, c. 1937
Oil on canvas
66.8 × 92.5 cm
NGV Australia
NORMAN ALFRED WILLIAMS LINDSAY (1879-1969)
Satyr and Two Nymphs
Watercolour
38.5 x 38.5 cm
Private collection
NORMAN LINDSAY
Bacchanalian Scene, c. 1941
Watercolour on paper
60.0 x 48.5 cm
Private collection
Bacchanalian Scene of 1941 is Lindsay at his best – the scene depicts a festival of Bacchus, the Greco-Roman god of wine, freedom, intoxication and ecstasy. Here, Bacchus is seen clutching a bunch of grapes above his head whilst a throng of festival-goers surrounding him enjoy the lively atmosphere. To add to the hedonism, three leopards stealth casually through the naked figures in a flourish of excess. More on this painting
NORMAN LINDSAY, (1879 - 1969)
AFTERNOON BATHERS, c.1940
Watercolour on paper
51.0 x 38.0 cm
Private collection
NORMAN ALFRED WILLIAMS LINDSAY (1879-1969)
The Orgy, c. 1932
Watercolour
48 x 42 cm
Private collection
Cartoons,
by Lindsay, were used both for recruitment and to promote conscription during
World War I.
NORMAN ALFRED WILLIAMS LINDSAY (1879-1969)
The Trumpet Calls, Circa 1918
Poster
88.25 x 67.25 cm
Private collection
Lindsay
also worked as an editorial cartoonist, notable for often illustrating the
racist and right-wing political leanings that dominated The Bulletin at that
time.
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