Sir Lionel Lindsay: Australia's Audubon

The prints of Sir Lionel Arthur Lindsay (1874 –1961) enrapture the eye and make us envy this lively and animated lines. The beauty of his black and white prints reflect the interest of the era of Australian printmakers who loved the elegant and velvety black of their inked up prints.

Lindsay was a highly regarded Australian artist and illustrator, known for his prints of natural world subjects. Some would call him the Audubon of Australia, but in truth, his skills and love of all subjects allowed him to exhibit a variety of imagery far beyond the descriptiveness of Audubon. His work was more about real life and the things one sees every day; although we who do not live in Australia would be hard-pressed to envision kangaroos and emus roaming about as being a normal part of our lives.

Sir Lionel Linsday: Australia's Select Printmaker

How many of us printmakers come from a creative family? Some argue that creativity is as much environmental or acquired as much as it may be inherent within our DNA. Upon discovery of this post's entry, there is some substantial evidence to support the idea that creativity runs within families like genetic traits of one's hair or eye color.

One of Australia's outstanding printmakers has been Sir Lionel Lindsay. The third son of ten children(five became artists), Lindsay's family were seriously into the arts, and his siblings (Norman, Percy, Ruby and Daryl) were recognized artists in their own right.  Lindsay's parents, Robert Charles William Alexander Lindsay,   a surgeon from Londonderry, Ireland, and  Jane,  the daughter of a Wesleyan missionary, the Rev. Thomas Williams were originally from Ayrshire, Scotland. The Lindsay family prospered from the linen trade, but  Lionel's father sailed to Melbourne, Australia in 1864 as a medical officer,  married Jane, and thus began the Lindsay artistic dynasty.

In 1874, Lionel was born in Creswick, in Australia's Victoria district. He was educated with his brothers  at Creswick Grammar School, where he edited the Boomerang magazine. Lionel's early interest in art was encouraged by his maternal grandfather who took him to galleries and museums.  He taught himself to draw by copying illustrations from periodicals, and became an admirer and collector of the work of the artist Charles Keene. Lionel became a pupil-assistant at the Melbourne Observatory (1889–1892) and later studied at the National Gallery School,Melbourne. Lindsay also taught himself printmaking in the 1890s. 

In 1907 he held an extremely successful exhibition at the Society of Artists. The work consisted of etchings about The Rocks, a run down section of old buildings in Sydney.  Two decades after 1907 he was still active with the Society of Artists and in 1921 Lindsay became president of  the Australian Painter-Etchers' Society. He  exhibited in London in 1923 and had his most successful exhibition with a London art dealer,  Colnaghi's Galleries,   who helped establish Lindsay as a major British printmaker.  

Lionel had settled in Sydney as a freelance artist and journalist. He worked for a number of publications and magazines, namely the Hawklet, the Daily Telegraph, the Bulletin, the Review, Pugh's Almanac.  the Outpost, Weekly Times, Clarion and the Arena. Between 1905 and 1919 Lionel  illustrated twenty-six books published by the New South Wales Bookstall Co., he was a contributor for the Lone Hand.

In 1926, Lindsay and his family lived in Monte Carlo, where he worked on copperplates, making his prints from portable press, and the next year he had an exhibition at Colnaghi's of sixty-seven etchings, dry-points and wood-engravings.  The exhibition was a great success. 'Lindsay made further overseas visits, continued to exhibit regularly with the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney, and the Sedon Gallery in Melbourne, and served as a trustee of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1918-29 and 1934-49. In 1941, Lindsay was knighted for his services to Australian art.

As an art critic in newspapers and art magazines, he was highly influential. In books such as A Consideration of the Art of Ernest Moffitt and Conrad Martens, the Man and his Art (1920) he pioneered tAustralia's he publication of art monographs. Lindsay wrote about  art he admired, yet his tastes did not extend beyond Post-Impressionism and he detested Modernism, expressing his feelings in a publication called Addled Art (1942).

Lionel Lindsay died in 1961. He left his Keene drawing collection to the National Gallery of Victoria. The Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, Queensland, hold a representive group of Lindsay's works, and an autobiography, Comedy of Life, was published posthumously in 1967. 

Lindsay's etching and his magnificent wood-engravings of birds and other animals have not been surpassed in Australia.  They are comparable to John J. Audubon for their sensitivity of form and attention to detail. They are joyously left descriptive in black and white rather than hand-coloring them. Lindsay's contributions to science and art are notable and we have him to thank for aptly describing the breadth of Australian fowl and local scenery. 

Adabel Allen's Prints Invoke Remembrance and Nurturing

Adabel Allen adabelallen.com  is an artist from Albuquerque, New Mexico, whom I met this summer as she was working on a series of prints for a fall solo show at New Grounds Printshop and Gallery newgroundsprintshop.com/. The exhibition referenced her on-going concerns for nature - particularly birds. The piece above is a print I personally witnessed her printing in preparation for that exhibition, called "Nurture - Nesting". In it, we come across a nesting female bird as she protects her unborn. She is in the brush and undetectable until we are nearly falling upon her. Her manner is natural and maternally secure in her duty. She sees us, with a mother's 'knowing' gaze, that we wouldn't dare disturb her. Her duty is sacred to Nature's call, and we respect that.


This piece reflects Allen's love of Nature and the things found therein. She shows us this mother in her element; almost indiscernible from her environment, sheathed in her neutral colors that aid her from detection. The bird's surroundings are slightly more colorful, complex and upon closer inspection, a dizzying spectacle of lines and textures. The bird is nestled within a protected and safe place, and will see her incubation period come to full term. Allen also exhibited a diptych series called "Remembrance", which used a more direct photo reference to birds in their natural settings. This series was more open and free of linear complexity. The display of the two series opened a range of poetic license, which felt delicately balanced and complete.

What anchors Allen's work in this series is her sincerity and fascination with each of the birds and their environments. She shows us how they manage to support one another and hold onto their territory. It's apparent from the show that she understands the relationships of birds to one another, and her own to them.She portrays them as a homogeneous bunch, and reveals their habitats. One doesn't feel an invader to these birds or their home turf, but rather that we're one of the 'crowd', one of the birds in the group. That takes some doing, considering a comparison with John J. Audubon's more scientifically descriptive rendition of his Birds of North America, which were by design more analytical, and the viewer was more removed from the subject. Here, Allen allows us to be with the birds, and it seems they treat us not as voyeurs, but as their equal. The mother-to-be above is patiently awaiting her young, and it appears we are welcome to wait with her.