Sir Lionel Lindsay’s artistic career was inconceivable without literature. He read Scott and Dumas before he was twelve. Kipling helped inspire him to become an artist in his teens. In his 20s, ‘my constant reading of Rabelais, Shakespeare, Theocritus, Boccaccio, Petronius, Swinburne, Rossetti and Dickens’ fed his vision. Without Mérimée’s Carmen, Lindsay’s acclaimed prints of Spain would not exist. He illustrated Baudelaire’s Femmes damnées and translated Huysmans’ Le Hareng. He illustrated ‘Banjo’ Paterson, Henry Lawson and Steele Rudd – for art historian Bernard Smith, ‘he captured the ethos of the “Australian legend” better perhaps than any other artist.’ He read Cervantes in the origin al Spanish and has been called the Don Quixote of Australian Art. After his death, his brother Daryl sorted out his studio and found ‘books on every subject under the sun’.

Image credit: Lionel LINDSAY  1874-1961 / Femmes damnées [detail] 1909 / etching and aquatint / 8.4 x 26.7 cm / Lionel Lindsay Gallery and Library Collection 306, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.

Opening hours: Tues - Sat 10am - 4pm Sun 1pm - 4pm Closed Mondays and public holidays

* Please note the Gallery's opening hours on Sundays are 1pm until 4pm