Will Dyson: Australia's Radical Genius

By Ross McMullin, Carlton North: Scribe Publications, 2006, 464 pages, paperback, $59.95. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress in the July 2006 issue.

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Following Sir Donald Bradman's death in 2001 Prime Minister John Howard has been slow in pronouncing a new 'greatest living Australian'. Perhaps he might have had Shane Warne in mind but if so he has kept such an idea to himself. Poet Les Murray has been mentioned in the press but the idea seems to have died a natural death. Poets don't score as well as cricketers and in any case it's not something average Australians generally feel the need to talk about.

Around ninety years ago cartoonist Will Dyson might have been a candidate for the title, and he was certainly described in London as 'the biggest thing Australia has produced'. That was when he was a mordant observer of the battle between Capital and Labour for the London Daily Herald and was lionised by literary giants, such as GK Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells, and workers alike. Shortly after Dyson became Australia's first official war artist and his drawings revealed such empathy for the diggers on the Western Front that he gained new recognition and admiration from journalist/historian Charles Bean, journalist (and later newspaper magnate) Keith Murdoch, photographer/soldier/adventurer Hubert Wilkins (the subject of a new biography by Simon Nasht) and Harold 'Pompey' Elliot, the Australian Imperial Force's most famous fighting general.

By 1980 the centenary of Dyson's birth he and his beloved wife, the artist Ruby Lind -- sister of the great friend of his youth, Norman Lindsay -- lay buried in an unmarked grave in London's Hendon cemetery, almost forgotten. Bean's great dream for the Australian War Memorial was for a special Dyson gallery containing 'the most precious part of our collection of pictures'. In 1957 there were 55 of his drawings displayed but as the War Memorial collections grew to encompass conflicts beyond the First World War his representation, permanently displayed, fell to four by 2005.

Some revival of interest in Dyson took place around his centenary with exhibitions at the War Memorial and the Bendigo Art Gallery, and Ross McMullin produced the first full-length biography, Will Dyson: Cartoonist, Etcher and Australia's Finest War Artist in 1984. Again, however, his reputation began to fade until the production of a play on his elder brother Ted in 2001 and a new play, The Ishmael Club in 2004, dealing with the inter-relationship between the Dyson and Lindsay families

McMullin explains that Will Dyson: Australia's Radical Genius is an updated and comprehensively rewritten book based on the earlier biography. A neat guide to the book is the contents page. Six main chapters, evocatively titled, for 400 pages of text. 'Full of mockery, humour and discontent', 'The Biggest Thing Australia has produced', 'The War has altered him a lot', 'Grief must be your housemate to the end', 'Our Great Empty Mental Spaces' and 'Artists draw until they drop'. Some are Dyson's words: others not.

The first comes from poet Hugh McRae at the time when, aged twenty, Dyson was in his formative years as an artist and writer, and beginning to experience bohemian Melbourne as a member of the Prehistoric Order of Cannibals. The second relates to his peak years in London before the outbreak of the first world war and is unattributed. The third is written by Ruby in a letter to Ted, and is connected to his hard times at the Front. The fourth is a line from the final poem, 'Surrender' of Dyson's book, Poems in Memory of a Wife in which he attempts to deal with his inconsolable loss after Ruby dies suddenly as a victim of the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1919. The fifth covers his inability to match his considerable skills to lower challenges on returning to Australia between 1925 and 1930, which leads to disillusionment about his country's anti-intellectualism. The last sees him embrace a new career as an etcher, successful with exhibitions in London and New York, before the Depression again brings out some fight in him, leading to his return as a cartoonist with the Daily Herald, and as an artist and writer for the New English Weekly.

McMullin fittingly paints the picture of his hero on a broad canvas, unveiling not only the artist, but the writer, the humourist, the speaker, the activist and the communities (artistic, social, journalistic, union, intellectual) with which he engages, and in which he sometimes thrives, and other times, contends. The tragedy of Ruby's death may not have entirely extinguished the light within him but in the author's words it 'deactivated the emotional force that had inspired his best cartoons'. (p281) As fellow artist, Hal Gye, remarked after reading Poems in Memory of a Wife, 'It finished Bill, really, I think'.

The book is handsomely produced with cartoons and sketches often given generous full-page treatment unlike the cramped space -- sometimes only a single column -- Dyson was afforded by his editors. It also contains an excellent range of photographs of family (both the Dysons and the Lindsays), friends, the Front and Dyson's passage through life. Above all, however, are the images of Ruby, especially the delicate refinement and serene beauty of the portrait on page 243. This picture, which reminds one of the young Ingrid Bergman, gathers additional force as it is matched against news of her death on the opposite page.

In August, 1929 McMullin notes Dyson, having written a letter to the Melbourne Herald complaining of the 'singular absence of the war as a serious motive with Australian writers'. A week later he delivers a lecture, chaired by young barrister Robert Menzies, on 'The Arts in Australia: A Plea and an Indictment' where he is critical of Australia's general lack of quality literature. Just recently at an art exhibition a poet friend expressed to me his anger that Australia's artistic community seemed to have no fire in its belly. There is insufficient political dimension to the work of novelists, playwrights, poets, journalists, he claimed, when there is so much to criticise -- the war in Iraq, and immigration policy to begin with. I demurred. 'What about the cartoonists?' He agreed they were an exception. Bruce Petty, Bill Leak, Michael Leunig, Peter Nicholson, Ross Tandberg, John Spooner and others carry the flame of protest lit by Dyson in another age.

Citation

• Bernard Whimpress. 'Review: Will Dyson: Australia's Radical Genius by Ross McMullin' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), July 2006. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 24 May 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

• Will Dyson (1880--1938) was a brilliant and versatile artist, and much more besides. His prodigious talents struggled to find a niche in Australia, but he burst into prominence with cartoons of extraordinary vigour and resource on the London Daily Herald. These whole-page cartoons with wordy, witty captions were revered by workers and intellectuals alike.
  
  Dyson was also a talented writer, a scintillating humourist and an arresting speaker. A stunning overnight success, he was described as the most famous Australian in the world.
  
  In 1916 Dyson became Australia's first official war artist. His drawings of profound empathy and sympathy remain a unique record of the Western Front experience. Once again he complemented his art with exquisite writing.
  
  Returning to Australia in 1925, he took up etching to international acclaim, confirming that whatever he did he did well.
  
  Absorbing, illuminating, and lavishly illustrated, this is a fascinating story of the life and times of a remarkable and under-recognised Australian.

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