Daryl Lindsay

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Sir Daryl Lindsay was born on 31 December 1890 in Creswick, Victoria, the youngest son in a large family born to Robert Charles Alexander and Jane Elizabeth Lindsay.

Daryl and his brothers Percy (the eldest), Lionel, and Norman, achieved distinction in the arts. Ruby, also an artist, became well known in artistic circles as the wife of the cartoonist/illustrator/journalist Will Dyson.

Prior to World War I, Daryl became a jackaroo near Collarenebri, later served in the war in France. In England he became a medical artist for the AIF. He made many contacts in the art world, studied at the Slade School of Art in London.

Returning to Australia he became fascinated with the first tour, 1936-1937, of the Ballets Russes to Australia - '(Colonel W. de Basil's) Monte Carlo Russian Ballet' — sketching them in the during performances and rehearsals. Later publishing a book of his sketches, Back stage with the Covent Garden Russian ballet, and illustrating Arnold Haskell's Dancing round the world: memoirs of an attempted escape from ballet.

In 1940, he became a curator at the National Gallery of Victoria, becoming director from 1942 to 1956. He also became a member of the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board in 1953. He died on 25 December 1976, in Mornington, Victoria.