Norman Lindsay
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Norman Lindsay
(1879-1969), was born Creswick, Victoria, the fourth son of Jane and Robert Lindsay, who was an Irish-born doctor; of the Lind-says' family of ten children, five were to become prominent artists. Norman Lindsay's work spans various fields: painter, etcher, illustrator, cartoonist, sculptor and model-maker. He also wrote numerous works of fiction, philosophical, polemical and autobiographical essays, literary criticism, art appreciations, reviews and reminiscences. Although he classed himself primarily as an artist, he was more significant in the literary sphere, where his positive aesthetic credo and charismatic personality had a profound influence. Educated at Creswick Grammar School after a delicate childhood, Lindsay left home at 16 to join his brother Lionel in Melbourne and earn his living as an artist. His first novel, A Curate in Bohemia (1913), describes his lively, precarious student life in Melbourne, supported mainly by the topical drawings for a local weekly, the Hawklet, that he 'ghosted' for Lionel. In 1901 he attracted the attention of J.F. Archibald and moved to Sydney, where he joined the staff of the Bulletin as a black-and-white artist. His association with the Bulletin, later expanded to reviewer, essayist and fiction-writer, lasted until two years before his death. From the first his work attracted controversy: his characteristic bacchanalian paintings were often condemned as immoral or irreligious; during the First World War his war cartoons aroused protests; and two of his novels, Redheap and The Cautious Amorist, were banned for a period within Australia. In 1931, after a police prosecution was launched against an issue of Art in Australia devoted to his work, he left for America, but soon returned. Apart from another earlier stay in Europe 1909-10, he remained firm in his conviction that an artist worked best within his own country. Lindsay was married twice. By his first marriage to Kate Parkinson he had three sons, Jack, Raymond and Philip; by his second wife, Rose Soady (Rose Lindsay) he had two daughters, Jane and Helen. He bequeathed a large part of his work to the University of Melbourne and the remainder to the National Trust of Australia on condition that it was preserved in the house at Springwood, NSW, where he lived for more than fifty years.
Lindsay's novels are A Curate in Bohemia (1913), Redheap (1930, banned in Australia until 1958 but published in the USA as Every Mother's Son), Miracles by Arrangement (1932, published in the USA as Mr. Gresham and Olympus), The Cautious Amorist (1932, banned in Australia 1934-58), Saturdee (q.v., 1933), Pan in the Parlour (1933), Age of Consent (1938), The Cousin from Fiji (q.v.,1945), Halfway to Anywhere (1947), Dust or Polish? (1950) and Rooms and Houses (1968). His children's novels are The Magic Pudding (q.v., 1918) and The Flyaway Highway (1936). Three works develop his aesthetic ideas: Creative Effort (1920), Hyperborea (1928) and Madam Life's Lovers (1929). My Mask (1970) is an autobiographical work, The Scribblings of an Idle Mind (1966) is a collection of philosophical essays, and Bohemians of the Bulletin (1965) describes some of the well-known personalities with whom Lindsay worked. Two anthologies, Norman Lindsay's Book, No. I (1912) and Norman Lindsay's Book, No. II (1915), contain some of his sketches and stories. Numerous selections of his art work have been published and Lindsay also illustrated many of his own books and those of other Australian authors, including Hugh McCrae, Leon Gellert, A.B. Paterson, Jack Lindsay, Kenneth Slessor, Dulcie Deamer, Kenneth Mackenzie and Douglas Stewart. There is as yet no comprehensive collection of Lindsay's prolific writings for the Bulletin, Art in Australia, the Lone Hand and other journals, although Keith Wingrove has edited a selection of his fiction-writing and art and literary criticism in Norman Lindsay on Art, Life and Literature (1990). His involvement with various publishing ventures, such as the Fanfrolico Press and the Endeavour Press, however, is well documented.
Writers who were directly influenced by Lindsay's aesthetic credo included R.D. FitzGerald, Hugh McCrae, Kenneth Slessor, Kenneth Mackenzie, Douglas Stewart and, of course, Jack Lindsay, although his indirect influence, coinciding with a traditional, vitalist strain in Australian literature, is inestimable. His ideas probably achieved their most concentrated effect in the 1920s, especially during the existence of the journal Vision, established by Jack Lindsay and himself. An ardent admirer of Nietzsche, Rabelais and Plato, Lindsay saw aesthetic values as the only values in a disordered world and 'creative effort' as the 'one enduring element in man's life'. By perpetual self-discovery and self-expression the great creative artist was seen as gifted with the power to penetrate contingent reality to life's eternal, natural essence. Key values in his credo were beauty, passion, youth, vitality, sexuality and courage. The artist's mission, inevitably separating him from the passionless, materialistic majority, naturally involved a continual resistance to all outwardly imposed restrictions. For the wowser and all kinds of humbug and pretension, Lindsay had an invincible contempt. His admiration for the ancients and the Italian Renaissance, and his conviction that true art was life-affirming and a quest for joy, were deepened by his hatred of 'modernism'. The First World War confirmed his intuition that modern civilisation was anti-life. Although social, political and religious issues failed to interest him, the implications of his attitudes were élitist, reactionary and anti-religious.
Lindsay's ideas are prominent in his novels, especially his conviction of the importance of sexual self-expression. A Curate in Bohemia is a vivid picture of Melbourne bohemian life in the 1890s, enlivened by Lindsay's liking for Dickensian oddities. But his talent for keen social observation and comedy is at its height in the trilogy on small-town life based on his memories of Creswick, Saturdee, Redheap and Halfway to Anywhere. Lindsay brilliantly captures both the pretentious adult life of a sleepy country town at the turn of the century and the spontaneous, if undercover, sexual energy of his youthful heroes and heroines. Pan in the Parlour, also set in a fictional country town, is a more schematised presentation of his ideas on the connection between sexuality and creativity; although lively and witty, it is less substantial than Redheap and The Cousin from Fiji. Both Age of Consent and The Cautious Amorist are popular comic novels but limited by Lindsay's preference for adolescent sexuality. Miracles by Arrangement, set in Sydney between the wars and concerned with the marital dilemma of a middle-aged couple, is his most successful and balanced attempt to deal with the world of his adult life. Dust or Polish? and Rooms and Houses are slacker works: the former, an attempt at a conventional novel, lacks Lindsay's distinctive satirical energy and the latter, ostensibly set in Melbourne in 1899, is an assortment of his diverse reminiscences and attitudes. Both Lindsay's novels for children are remarkable achievements: The Magic Pudding, a versatile blend of fantasy, droll humour, satire and comic verse, is probably Australia's favourite children's book; The Flyaway Highway, though less popular, has the same elements and both are enhanced by Lindsay's distinctive illustrations.
The centenary of Lindsay's birth was market by the publication of his fantasy Micomicana (1979), ed. Jane Lindsay; by a collection of his letters (1979), ed. R.G. Howarth and A.W. Barker; and by The World of Norman Lindsay (1979), ed. Lin Bloomfield. A collection of his war cartoons 1914-18 was published in 1983, ed. Peter Fullerton. Accounts of Lindsay's life and work include Douglas Stewart's personal memoir (1975), John Hetherington's authorised biography Norman Lindsay: The Embattled Olympian (1973), and Jane Lindsay's Portrait of Pa (1973).
Lindsay's novels are A Curate in Bohemia (1913), Redheap (1930, banned in Australia until 1958 but published in the USA as Every Mother's Son), Miracles by Arrangement (1932, published in the USA as Mr. Gresham and Olympus), The Cautious Amorist (1932, banned in Australia 1934-58), Saturdee (q.v., 1933), Pan in the Parlour (1933), Age of Consent (1938), The Cousin from Fiji (q.v.,1945), Halfway to Anywhere (1947), Dust or Polish? (1950) and Rooms and Houses (1968). His children's novels are The Magic Pudding (q.v., 1918) and The Flyaway Highway (1936). Three works develop his aesthetic ideas: Creative Effort (1920), Hyperborea (1928) and Madam Life's Lovers (1929). My Mask (1970) is an autobiographical work, The Scribblings of an Idle Mind (1966) is a collection of philosophical essays, and Bohemians of the Bulletin (1965) describes some of the well-known personalities with whom Lindsay worked. Two anthologies, Norman Lindsay's Book, No. I (1912) and Norman Lindsay's Book, No. II (1915), contain some of his sketches and stories. Numerous selections of his art work have been published and Lindsay also illustrated many of his own books and those of other Australian authors, including Hugh McCrae, Leon Gellert, A.B. Paterson, Jack Lindsay, Kenneth Slessor, Dulcie Deamer, Kenneth Mackenzie and Douglas Stewart. There is as yet no comprehensive collection of Lindsay's prolific writings for the Bulletin, Art in Australia, the Lone Hand and other journals, although Keith Wingrove has edited a selection of his fiction-writing and art and literary criticism in Norman Lindsay on Art, Life and Literature (1990). His involvement with various publishing ventures, such as the Fanfrolico Press and the Endeavour Press, however, is well documented.
Writers who were directly influenced by Lindsay's aesthetic credo included R.D. FitzGerald, Hugh McCrae, Kenneth Slessor, Kenneth Mackenzie, Douglas Stewart and, of course, Jack Lindsay, although his indirect influence, coinciding with a traditional, vitalist strain in Australian literature, is inestimable. His ideas probably achieved their most concentrated effect in the 1920s, especially during the existence of the journal Vision, established by Jack Lindsay and himself. An ardent admirer of Nietzsche, Rabelais and Plato, Lindsay saw aesthetic values as the only values in a disordered world and 'creative effort' as the 'one enduring element in man's life'. By perpetual self-discovery and self-expression the great creative artist was seen as gifted with the power to penetrate contingent reality to life's eternal, natural essence. Key values in his credo were beauty, passion, youth, vitality, sexuality and courage. The artist's mission, inevitably separating him from the passionless, materialistic majority, naturally involved a continual resistance to all outwardly imposed restrictions. For the wowser and all kinds of humbug and pretension, Lindsay had an invincible contempt. His admiration for the ancients and the Italian Renaissance, and his conviction that true art was life-affirming and a quest for joy, were deepened by his hatred of 'modernism'. The First World War confirmed his intuition that modern civilisation was anti-life. Although social, political and religious issues failed to interest him, the implications of his attitudes were élitist, reactionary and anti-religious.
Lindsay's ideas are prominent in his novels, especially his conviction of the importance of sexual self-expression. A Curate in Bohemia is a vivid picture of Melbourne bohemian life in the 1890s, enlivened by Lindsay's liking for Dickensian oddities. But his talent for keen social observation and comedy is at its height in the trilogy on small-town life based on his memories of Creswick, Saturdee, Redheap and Halfway to Anywhere. Lindsay brilliantly captures both the pretentious adult life of a sleepy country town at the turn of the century and the spontaneous, if undercover, sexual energy of his youthful heroes and heroines. Pan in the Parlour, also set in a fictional country town, is a more schematised presentation of his ideas on the connection between sexuality and creativity; although lively and witty, it is less substantial than Redheap and The Cousin from Fiji. Both Age of Consent and The Cautious Amorist are popular comic novels but limited by Lindsay's preference for adolescent sexuality. Miracles by Arrangement, set in Sydney between the wars and concerned with the marital dilemma of a middle-aged couple, is his most successful and balanced attempt to deal with the world of his adult life. Dust or Polish? and Rooms and Houses are slacker works: the former, an attempt at a conventional novel, lacks Lindsay's distinctive satirical energy and the latter, ostensibly set in Melbourne in 1899, is an assortment of his diverse reminiscences and attitudes. Both Lindsay's novels for children are remarkable achievements: The Magic Pudding, a versatile blend of fantasy, droll humour, satire and comic verse, is probably Australia's favourite children's book; The Flyaway Highway, though less popular, has the same elements and both are enhanced by Lindsay's distinctive illustrations.
The centenary of Lindsay's birth was market by the publication of his fantasy Micomicana (1979), ed. Jane Lindsay; by a collection of his letters (1979), ed. R.G. Howarth and A.W. Barker; and by The World of Norman Lindsay (1979), ed. Lin Bloomfield. A collection of his war cartoons 1914-18 was published in 1983, ed. Peter Fullerton. Accounts of Lindsay's life and work include Douglas Stewart's personal memoir (1975), John Hetherington's authorised biography Norman Lindsay: The Embattled Olympian (1973), and Jane Lindsay's Portrait of Pa (1973).
| Morris Lurie, Michael Leunig, Merv Lilley | |
| Patrick Logan, Percy Leason, Percy Lindsay |
Oxford Grove Art:
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Norman (Alfred Williams) Lindsay
(b Creswick, Victoria, 23 Feb 1879; d Sydney, NSW, 21 Nov 1969). Australian draughtsman, painter and writer. Born into a family that produced fine artists, his early skill in drawing and reading was encouraged by relatives. He received his only formal training in 1897 at the art colony run by Walter Withers at 'Charterisville' in Heidelberg. In 1899 he moved to Sydney, married in 1900, and began a lifelong association with the Bulletin. He was best known for exquisite pen drawings whose dark areas were enlivened by minute traces of white. In 1906 he began producing wash drawings; during World War I he designed government posters, and after the war he took up watercolour painting. From 1918 to 1938 he concentrated on etchings, which were printed by his second wife, Rose Soady (b c. 1885), whom he married in 1920. She collected the drawings and proofs for his over two hundred published etchings, which are now in the Mitchell Library, Sydney. In 1927 he founded the Fanfrolico Press with his son Jack. His home at Springwood, NSW, is now a gallery and museum.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Norman Lindsay
| Norman Alfred William Lindsay | |
|---|---|
 Norman Lindsay circa 1931 |
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| Born | 22 February 1879 Creswick, Victoria |
| Died | 21 November 1969 (aged 90) |
| Nationality | Australia |
Norman Alfred William Lindsay (22 February 1879 – 21 November 1969) was an Australian artist, sculptor, writer, editorial cartoonist, scale modeler, and boxer. He was born in Creswick, Victoria.
Lindsay was the son of Anglo-Irish surgeon Robert Charles William Alexander Lindsay and Jane Elizabeth Lindsay from Creswick. The fifth of ten children, he was the brother of Percy Lindsay (1870–1952), Lionel Lindsay (1874–1961), Ruby Lindsay (1885–1919), and Daryl Lindsay (1889–1976).
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Contents
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Personal life
Lindsay married Catherine (Kate) Agatha Parkinson, in Melbourne on 23 May 1900. Their son Jack was born in Melbourne on 20 October 1900, followed by Raymond in 1903 and Philip in 1906. They divorced in 1918. Philip died in 1958 and Raymond in 1960. In the Lindsay tradition, Jack became a prolific publisher, writer, translator and activist.
Rose Soady
Rose Soady began modelling for Lindsay in 1920. She became his second wife, his most recognizable model, his business manager, and the printer for most of his etchings. By the time he left for London in 1909, Rose supplanted his wife and joined him there in 1910.[1]
Lindsay married Soady on 14 January 1920. Their children, Jane and Helen (Honey), were born in 1920 and 1922 respectively. Jane died in 1999. Honey remained in the U.S. after visiting with her mother to cache her father's works at the beginning of World War II and Jane acquired the printmaking studio on the Faulconbridge property in 1949 and build a house around it. Honey married twice, the first marriage was to Bruce Glad, the second to Richard Siau. Jane later married Honey's first husband, Bruce Glad.
Works
Lindsay is widely regarded as one of Australia's greatest artists, producing a vast body of work in different media, including pen drawing, etching, watercolour, oil and sculptures in concrete and bronze.
A large body of his work is housed in his former home at Faulconbridge, New South Wales, now the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum, and many works reside in private and corporate collections. His art continues to climb in value today. In 2002, a record price was attained for his oil painting Spring's Innocence, which sold to the National Gallery of Victoria for A$333,900.
Loss
His frank and sumptuous nudes were highly controversial. In 1940, Soady took sixteen crates of paintings, drawings and etchings to the U.S. to protect them from the war. Unfortunately, they were discovered when the train they were on caught fire and were impounded and subsequently burned as pornography by American officials. Soady's older brother Lionel remembers Lindsay's reaction: "Don't worry, I'll do more."[1]
Output
Lindsay's creative output was vast, his energy enormous. Several eyewitness accounts tell of his working practices in the 1920s. He would wake early and produce a watercolour before breakfast, then by mid-morning he would be in his etching studio where he would work until late afternoon. He would work on a concrete sculpture in the garden during the afternoon and in the evening write a new chapter for whatever novel he was working on at the time.
As a break, he would work on a model ship some days. 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.
In 1938, Lindsay published Age of Consent, which focused on 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.[2]
Career
In 1895, Lindsay moved to Melbourne to work on a local magazine with his older brother Lionel. His Melbourne experiences are described in Rooms and Houses.
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.
Lindsay wrote the children's classic The Magic Pudding published in 1918 and created a scandal when his novel Redheap (supposedly based on his hometown, Creswick) was banned due to censorship laws. Many of his novels have a frankness and vitality that matches his art.
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; the "Red Menace" and "Yellow Peril" were popular themes in his cartoons. These attitudes occasionally spilled over into his other work, and modern editions of The Magic Pudding often omit one couplet in which "you unmitigated Jew" is used as an insult.
Lindsay was associated with a number of poets, such as Kenneth Slessor, Francis Webb and Hugh McCrae, influencing them in part through a philosophical system outlined in his book Creative Effort. He also illustrated the cover for the seminal Henry Lawson book, While the Billy Boils. Lindsay's son, Jack Lindsay, emigrated to England, where he set up Fanfrolico Press, which issued works illustrated by Lindsay.
Lindsay influenced more than a few artists, notably the illustrators Roy Krenkel and Frank Frazetta; he was also good friends with Ernest Moffitt.
Europe
Lindsay travelled to Europe in 1909, Rose followed later. 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.
Screen versions of Lindsay's work
Film
The first major screen adaptation of Lindsay's literary works was the (1969) Anglo-Australian co-production Age of Consent; adapted from Lindsay's 1935 novel. It was the last full length feature film directed by Michael Powell[N 1], and starred James Mason and Helen Mirren. In (1994) Sam Neill played a fictionalised version of Lindsay in John Duigan's Sirens, set and filmed primarily at Lindsay's Faulconbridge home. The film is also notable as the movie debut of Australian supermodel Elle MacPherson.
Television
In 1972 five novels were adapted for TV as part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Norman Lindsay festival. These were Halfway to Nowhere (adapted by Cliff Green), "Redheap" (adapted by Eleanor Witcombe), A Curate in Bohemia (adapted by Michael Boddy), The Cousin from Fiji (adapted by Barbara Vernon) and Dust or Polish (adapted by Peter Kenna).[3]
Searches of the ABC's TARA Online television database and the collection database of the National Film & Sound Archive (conducted 4 Mar. 2009) failed to return any results for these programs. Regrettably, many videotaped ABC programs, series (e.g. Certain Women) and program segments from the late 1960s and early 1970s were subsequently erased as part of an ill-considered economy drive. Although the recent closure of ABC Sydney's Gore Hill studios uncovered considerable quantities of film and video footage long thought to have been lost (e.g. the complete The Aunty Jack Show), the absence of any reference on the TARA or NFSA databases and the paucity of citations elsewhere (e.g. IMDb) suggest that the master recordings of these programs may no longer exist. Unfortunately, the first broadcasts of these programs also predated the advent of affordable domestic videocassette recorders in Australia (which did not come into widespread household use until the late 1970s) so it fairly unlikely that any domestically recorded off-air copies exist.
Bibliography
Novels
- A Curate in Bohemia 1913
- Redheap 1930 (published in the U.S. as Every Mother's Son)
- Miracles by Arrangement 1932 (published in the U.S. as Mr. Gresham and Olympus)
- Saturdee 1933
- Pan in the Parlour 1933
- The Cautious Amorist 1934 (first published in the U.S. in 1932)
- Age of Consent 1935
- The Cousin from Fiji 1945
- Halfway to Anywhere 1947
- Dust or Polish? 1950
Children's books
- The Magic Pudding 1918
- The Flyaway Highway 1936
Poetry book
- illustrations in Francis Webb A Drum for Ben Boyd Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1948
Other
- Creative Effort: an essay in affirmation 1924
- Hyperborea: Two Fantastic Travel Essays 1928
- The scribblings of an idle mind 1956
- Norman Lindsay: Pencil Drawings 1969, Angus & Robertson, Sydney
- Norman Lindsay's pen drawings 1974
Autobiographical
- Bohemians of the Bulletin 1965
- Rooms and Houses 1968
- My Mask (autobiography) 1970
See also
- Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum
- Kenneth G. Ross: author of the musical play Norman Lindsay and his Push in Bohemia (1978)
- Visual arts of Australia
References
Notes
- ^ The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972) was made after this and is a bit too long at 55 minutes to be considered a short film, but is shorter than most feature films.
References
- ^ a b "Norman Lindsay Biography". ww.normanlindsay.com. http://www.normanlindsay.net/Biography.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
- ^ John Baxter (10 February 2009). Carnal Knowledge: Baxter's Concise Encyclopedia of Modern Sex. HarperCollins. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-06-087434-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=7qEG7CBOH_gC. Retrieved 24 December 2011.
- ^ "Filmography – Norman Lindsay". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0512284/. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
Bibliography
- Hetherington, J., Norman Lindsay: The Embattled Olympian, Oxford University Press, (Melbourne), 1973.
- Wingrove. K. (ed.), Norman Lindsay on Art, Life and Literature, University of Queensland Press, (St. Lucia), 1990.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Norman Lindsay |
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Norman Lindsay |
- Norman Lindsay Gallery Home Page
- Lindsay's work in the National Library of Australia, Canberra
- Works by Norman Lindsay at Project Gutenberg
- The Norman Lindsay Website for facsimile etchings and books
- Lionel's account
- Norman Lindsay at Australian Art
- Joanna Mendelssohn 'Norman Lindsay's The Cousin from Fiji and the Lindsay Family Papers' JASAL 4 (2005)
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Oxford Companion to Australian Literature
Oxford University Press. © 1994 All rights reserved.
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Oxford Grove Art
The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.
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Mentioned in
Norman Lindsay
(Australian cartoonist)
Sirens
(1994 Comedy Drama Film)
The Magic Pudding
(2000 Film)
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