Lindsay family

/ˈlɪnzi/ (say 'linzee)

noun an Australian family of artists and writers.
1. Percival Charles, 1870–1952, illustrator and landscape painter.
2. his brother, Sir Lionel Arthur, 1874–1961, etcher, printmaker, art critic, painter, and cartoonist.
3. their brother, Norman Alfred William, 1879–1969, influential painter, etcher, illustrator, and author; wrote the children's book The Magic Pudding (1918).
4. their sister, Ruby, 1885–1919, book and magazine illustrator.
5. their brother, Sir (Ernest) Daryl, 1890–1976, painter; noted for his landscapes.
6. Lady Joan à Beckett, 1896–1984, wife of Sir Daryl, painter and novelist; author of Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967).
7. Jack, 1900–90, son of Norman, radical writer, historian, translator and critic.
Lionel Lindsay was employed as a cartoonist from 1903 to 1926. He exhibited etchings and from the 1920s received international acclaim for his wood engravings and printmaking. From the 1930s he voiced his criticism of modernist tendencies in art; his critical works include Conrad Martens: The Man and his Work (1920). His younger brother Norman Lindsay was a sickly child who spent many hours indoors cultivating a facility for drawing. In 1896 Lionel, who was already a black-and-white illustrator, gave him work drawing for the Hawklet. The Decameron illustrations were produced at this time. Initially drawn as an exercise in composition, the 30 drawings are rich and intricate in detail. In 1901 Norman Lindsay moved from Melbourne to Sydney to work as staff artist for the Bulletin. Over the next 20 years he became an artist of national stature whose work, with its prominent motif of naked female sirens, was frequently attacked by Protestant churchmen, whom Lindsay dismissed as `wowsers'. During the 1920s and 1930s his home at Springwood, in the Blue Mountains, became a forum for young Australian writers including Kenneth Slessor and Douglas Stewart. A talented writer himself, Norman Lindsay wrote 13 works of fiction including the classic children's story The Magic Pudding, and the novels Redheap (1930), which was banned until 1959, and The Cousin from Fiji (1945). After his death the Springwood house was bequeathed to the National Trust of Australia as a museum for his work. Norman Lindsay's paintings, drawings and etchings are represented in most Australian collections.