Ruby, Norman, Pearl, Percy, Reg, Bill Dyson and Mary in Creswick garden

Ruby Lindsay (1885-1919), artist and illustrator, left home at 16 and went to Melbourne where she studied at the National Gallery School. She worked as an illustrator, contributing drawings for publications such as the Bulletin and the Adelaide satirical journal, the Gadfly. She married Will Dyson in 1909 and travelled to London with him and her brother Norman. In England, Ruby continued to work as an illustrator. Ruby caught influenza during the worldwide epidemic of the virus in 1919 and died at the age of 32.

Norman Lindsay (1879-1969), artist, cartoonist, and writer, came from a family that produced five artists. A delicate boy, Lindsay left the family home in Creswick when he was sixteen to live with his brother Lionel in Melbourne. Lionel was then a staff artist on the Hawklet, attending the National Gallery School and sharing a studio with George Coates. When Norman arrived in Melbourne he ghosted Lionel's drawings for the journal, his brother paying him ten shillings a week out of the thirty-five he earned. In late 1896 Norman became a cartoonist for the Hawklet in his own right, started to attend the life class at the National Gallery school and, with Lionel, joined the student fraternity the Prehistoric Order of Cannibals. The following year the brothers' styles began to diverge. In 1901 Norman moved north to make his permanent home in the Blue Mountains, henceforth working for the Bulletin in an association that lasted almost to his death. His first novel was published in 1913, and by the 1920s he was both proficient and prolific in pen and ink drawing, etching, woodcuts, painting and sculpture.

Percy Lindsay (1870-1952), artist, was the eldest child of Robert and Jane Lindsay, born, as were his nine siblings, in Creswick, Victoria. Percy showed an early interest in art, sketching on weekends and attending painting classes with Walter Withers before moving to Melbourne, where he briefly studied at the National Gallery School. He moved to Sydney in 1917 and took over from his brother Lionel as the principal illustrator for the New South Wales Bookstall Co, illustrating 33 of their books between 1919 and 1926 including stories by Steele Rudd and Vance Palmer. He died in Sydney in 1952.

Will (William Henry) Dyson, cartoonist, caricaturist, writer and draughtsman, was born in Alfredtown, near Ballarat, and studied for a short time in Melbourne, where he worked closely with his older brother Ambrose. Dyson's first cartoon appeared in the Sydney Bulletin in 1897, in which year he also exhibited in the first show of the Society of Artists. Thirteen years later he married Ruby Lindsay, sister of his friend Norman, and they all went to London together, but the two men soon quarrelled irrevocably. In the first years of World War I Dyson's cartoons became famous in London and he gained a large intellectual following. He was appointed an official war artist for the AIF in 1916, and his Australia at War (1918) remains one of the most powerful tributes to Australian involvement in the conflict. Dyson returned to Australia after Ruby Lindsay died in the worldwide influenza epidemic of 1919. He was feted in Melbourne, where he subsequently worked for the short-lived Punch and the Herald and exerted some influence on the local art scene. During this period he drew portrait caricatures of visiting celebrities including Anna Pavlova and the opera singer Fyodor Chaliapin. Dyson left Australia permanently in 1930, stopping in New York, where his drypoint etchings were well received, before settling in London.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2008