Lionel Lindsay

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Sir Lionel Arthur Lindsay (17 October 1874 – 22 May 1961) was an Australian artist.

Lindsay was born in the Victorian town of Creswick, the brother of artist Norman Lindsay and artist and critic Daryl Lindsay. Lionel Lindsay became a pupil-assistant at the Melbourne Observatory (1889-1892) and later studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne.

Lindsay taught himself etching and engraving in the 1890s while a student, immediately prior to his first trip to Spain and England. On his return to Australia he settled in Sydney as a freelance artist and journalist, contributing to the Bulletin and other magazines and newspapers.

In 1907 he held an extremely successful exhibition of etchings in Sydney. The two decades after 1907 saw him active with the Society of Artists and in 1921, when the Australian Painter-Etchers' Society was formed, Lindsay was its first president. He began to exhibit in London in 1923 and had his most successful exhibition of that period at Colnaghi, a London art dealer, in 1927. Colnaghi led British interest in Lindsay's work and guaranteed his reputation as a major British printmaker and watercolourist.

Key themes in his oeuvre include the swagman in the outback^[1], old Sydney^[2], portraits of prominent Australians^[3], romantic views of Spain^[4] and Arab culture, and birds and animals^[5].

Lindsay became a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and was knighted for his services to Australian art in 1941. In 1942 Lindsay published Addled Art, a vituperative attack on modernism in art. He was good friends with Ernest Moffitt and publish a book on his art (see link below). Lindsay died in Melbourne on 17 October 1961.

The Lionel Lindsay Art Gallery and Library, in Toowoomba, Queensland, holds rare books, manuscripts and maps, and over 400 art works by members of the Lindsay family and other significant Australian painters, including Frederick McCubbin, Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and Rupert Bunny.