THE BOOKFELLOW.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13336, 30 January 1909, Page 7

THE BOOKFELLOW.

\Twn_f fob '-The Pbess'' bt A. G. Stephen's. (Copyright.—All Rights Reserved.) PEOPLE NOTORIOUS. lI.—NORMAN ALFRED LINDSAY. "Ho locks liko a boy," said a lady, watching him rrambol about an art exhibition in Melbourne. "And \__hat a naughty boy!" &he added, catching sight of his drawings. There is only to embroider the text. Tho boy will bo thirty years old on 23rd Februajjr. From a lady's point of view, ho is naughtier than ever. There is a word often misapplied, for a place much misunderstood —Bohemia. -Virmnn, Lindsay really found it, and in Melbourne-.'—really lived thero, .sucnt his youth there. Bohemia was very joyous, very squalid, very full of hard work. It ha.s been long left behind, and tho quondam Bohemian lives in Sydney, married, father of an interostin_: family, and with manners that elderly _fntlemen find (occasioimllv) above reproach. One of these days he "ill wake u_.> to re.-i!.s<» himself respectable. Even now the- policeman of his suburb salutes him. £ut he remains a boy— it ,seem< that he will be boy for ever, oven when wrinkles como "with fame.

Hero are some characteristic headlines irom Lindsay 1 - unpublished auto--io_;r-anhv : —

"Born at Creswiek. Victoria, 23rd -ebruary. 1879. Totally at State school and Creswiek Graraniar school—a noted dullard and wagger— never cot a r-rize (-yon. Loft home at sixteen to heln illustrate a wccklv newspaper in Melbourne, and there did abide for several years. Regarded always by the editor - " as absolutely tho rottenest artist lie over employed. Saw my first- prize fight, ab that time- in the okl Victoria Hall— tho only really important event in my career—Jack MoGowon v. Tim Hegart.y; twenty rounds. Thereafter I graced the Prc.<3 box for mam- years—regularly drinking one glass'of beer beforo each ovent, in company with Steel. tfarrctt, a dc-ar friend of mine, in tho envious view of tho audience. "Thus wrought I suffering, audi knew the. envy of vast multitudes. 'At that time, I and tho class of -letnourno Gallery art students endured sixpenny eating-hoiise_-_dog-_hops wero they named; smoked tho pipe, nnd wore the worst hats procurable We abode in, 'rooms'—l myself 'moving' (sometimes voluntarily) twentvseven times in the space of five years". married at 21—•simultaneou-'y trying to get work, grow a moustache, anel wear a boxer hat. I failed dismally in all three. Thereupon camo I to Sydney, dwelling here till this hour —working, perchance, but never, never growing whiskers or wearing boxer i hats."

And with such an apprenticeship Lindsay learned to make pen-line draw-' u\gs that aro a wonder and delight to judges as expert as Julian Ashton, of Sydney, and Bernard Hall, of Melbourne. For the pen is one of the most- difficult of artistic implement- to handle, brilliantly—an implement past the skill of a thousand gc-cd men with tho brush.

Creswiek is a mining township where Lindsay's father, a Dublin doctor of medicine, came in Victorian golddigging days. Lindsay is an Irish boy with an Australian nervous system—he has a boy's height, a boy's'figure, a boy'.s bubbling brain, and a boy's bri-xht face, with a notable nose under wide, blue, eager eyes. Yet his mother's .strain may have mado him tho missionary, as many of his drawings " avow him, full of moral purpose. On the mother's side ho is a grandson of the Rev. Thomas Williams, known throughout the South Pacific in the 'fifties and 'sixties. And thero wero two missionary generations before that. The Lindsay family—there are about ten children—is an astonishing family altogether. A brother, Lionel, and a sister, Ruby, are well-known black-and-white designers; another brother, Percy, is a painter of repute; anel nearly all the rest are exploiting one unusual : talent or another.

Norman Lindsay is known above the others for the remarkable skill, facility, art- vivacity of his pen-elrawings. The vivacity is his by inheritance ; skill and facility wore acquired by continuous labour, tlay after day, year after year. Lindsay might almost be said to be always drawing. There aro interludes, of course, but ho applies himself to Mis task as regularly as an insurance clerk is applied. Even, through continually holding the pen, he has specially developed a thumb-muscle that enables him to keep on holding. This clever boy has drawn the human figure so often that he can almost draw it blindfold. In five minutes be can make a newspaper illustration— a scene with several people—that passes muster. It is only in his serious work that his talent can be truly seen. There it seems in essence the decorative treatment of an idea—with tho pen used wonderfully, in a technique that achieves all tones, all textures, and marvellous effects of light and shade. Ordinary people sometimes find Norman Lindsay's drawings crudely inspired, or violently expressed. Unfortunately, he is physically not very strong, and I havo always thought that his exaggeration of strength into violence depends on the principle upon which a tall man marries a short woman—it is a revulsion from himself. The remarkable technical quality- of his best work is. however, unaffected by his choice of subjects or of models; and. withal, he remains a gay, brave companion, aud ono of the few designers who are doing work worth while—mest of it unpublished and unknown—in Australasia.