Title

Prints by Lionel Lindsay.

Author

Gillespie, Janie

Source

ANGA News (Canberra).

Details

January / February 1989, pages 2-3.

Publication date

February 1989

Physical description

illustrations

Type

Essay/article

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Prints by Lionel Lindsay.
by Janie Gillespie.

Lionel Lindsay (1 874 -1961) is perhaps Australia’s best known and most respected printmaker. Both during his lifetime and since his death he has been acknowledged as one of Australia’s more popular artists.

In the forthcoming Bicentennial print exhibition, Prints and Australia: Pre-Settlement to Present, visitors will be able to view the wood engravings for which Lindsay is best remembered. Lethe Wharf, Goat and rhododendrons, Philosophy, The demon, and The broken fence, will all be displayed in Gallery 5 on one wall devoted to Lindsay’s wood engravings.

The show will also present some of the lesser known prints and posters by this prolific artist, including those he produced early in his career. His first woodcut, an Arcadian landscape, is roughly cut and poorly printed. Other early woodcuts, such as those of Spanish dancers and guitarists, have been printed in bold colour in the Japanese method - in which the ink is brushed gently on to the block - to give a rich painterly effect.

These early works reveal a very different approach and style to that generally associated with Lindsay’s work, in which crisp white lines are precisely cut and, particularly in the etchings, clearly and cleanly printed. Lindsay also deftly controlled the aquatint process in his later etchings, as his 1920 and 1930 depictions of Sydney and its buildings clearly demonstrate.

In the 1898 etching The reader, with its rough edges and scratches, the young artist’s awkwardness in this medium is evident. In his later works, Lindsay would never have accepted such obvious foul biting. Experimentation in the various print techniques was a priority for Lindsay in the early stages of his career, and it lent a freshness and vitality to his works from this period.

The subjects depicted in many of these early prints are also surprising. A deserted shrine lost in the wilderness of an old garden filled with tall, brooding cypresses, lonely nymphs wandering along cliff tops, nude representations of the huntress Diana, and a goat dancing to the clash of cymbals while Pan plays his pipes, are subjects that the artist used in his early prints but did not develop in his later works.

In 1982 the Australian National Gallery was given an almost complete collection of Lionel Lindsay’s works by his friend Alan Queale, and many of the prints selected for the Bicentennial exhibition are from this bequest. For visitors to the exhibition, these rare early prints will provide an insight into the breadth and richness of Lindsay’s art.

© Janie Gillespie, 1989.
[ANG Association, January/February, 1989, pp.2-3.]
 
Image:
Spanish woman. c.1917
colour woodcut
29.4 x 14.2 cm
Bequest of Alan Queale 1982