Will Dyson
William Henry Dyson was an Australian illustrator, artist and political cartoonist who achieved international recognition. He initially worked as a freelance artist in Australia, developing a specialty as a caricaturist, notably in The Bulletin magazine. In 1909 Dyson married Ruby Lindsay and the couple settled in London soon afterwards. As cartoonist for The Daily Herald newspaper, Dyson became widely known as an illustrator and commentator supporting progressive social reforms in Britain. His cartoons were often controversial, tackling difficult issues such as poverty, inequality and war, and were characterised by their biting wit and artistic impact. At the outbreak of World War I Dyson directed his scathing artwork at German militarism. In 1916 he applied to join the Australian forces at the Western Front as an artist. He was appointed an honorary lieutenant and joined the Anzac troops in France in January 1917. By the following May his appointment as Australia's first official war artist was formalised. After the death of his wife in March 1919 Dyson went through a difficult emotional period, during which his artistic output suffered. In late 1924 he returned to Australia after accepting a contract to work for the Herald publishing group in Melbourne. Dyson returned to England in 1930. He died in London in 1938, aged 57.
Biography
Early life
William Henry Dyson was born on 3 September 1880 at Alfredton, a suburb of Ballarat in central Victoria, the ninth of eleven children of George Arthur Dyson and Jane. His father had emigrated to Victoria in 1852 and worked as a miner in the Ballarat district, but by the time of William's birth, he was working as a dry-goods hawker.In about 1883 the Dyson family settled in South Melbourne. William's elder brother Edward, an aspiring writer, worked as a factory hand in his uncle's paper-bag factory and become the main financial support for the family.
Will Dyson attended the Albert Park State School until 1892. Dyson exhibited early talents for drawing and writing, for which he was supported and guided by his sisters and elder brothers, Ted and Ambrose. His father was locally active in the emerging labour movement, as were his older brothers. Ted and Ambrose Dyson contributed articles and drawings to a socialist newspaper, The Champion, published in the mid-1890s.
Freelance artist
Dyson began submitting illustrations to The Bulletin magazine in 1897, aged seventeen, at a stage when he was still striving to develop his drawing style. He had cartoons accepted for publication in the Adelaide weekly The Critic during 1897. In about 1898 Dyson met Norman Lindsay and the two aspiring artists formed a close friendship. Both young men had grown up in the goldfields region of Victoria. They would often go about the streets of Melbourne in search of subjects to draw, both young men at that time in the process of refining their respective illustrative techniques. Dyson was a keen amateur boxer, as were his older brothers Ambrose and Ted. His friend Norman Lindsay also shared Dyson's interest in boxing. Dyson joined the Cannibal Club, a coterie of young artists in Melbourne whose members included Lindsay and his brothers Lionel and Percy, Tom Durkin, Max Meldrum, Hugh McCrae and Alex Sass. The Dyson and Lindsay families, the members of which shared common artistic and literary talents and interests, began to develop close bonds. In 1903 Lionel Lindsay married Jean Dyson at the Sydney suburb of Woollahra.Dyson's first illustration accepted by The Bulletin was purchased for three guineas. From early 1900 Dyson's illustrations and cartoons began to be published in the Sydney-based Bulletin magazine, his early contributions appearing under the pseudonym 'Asa Dane'. He became a regular contributor, with conservative politicians being a frequent target of his satire. Fellow artist Hal Gye, in describing Dyson's skill as a caricaturist, commented: "Relentlees and cruel, he disturbed many a fat politician's quiet calm, and many an actor's contentedness, and yet as bitter as he was with his pencil he was quite the opposite himself".
Ambrose Dyson had been employed as an artist by The Critic, the weekly journal based in Adelaide. In about June 1903 he left to take up the position of art representative in Melbourne for the Sydney-based Bulletin magazine. After his brother's departure, Will Dyson was employed as a staff artist and writer at The Critic, for which his contributions included coloured caricatures. Dyson had begun experimenting with colour-printing techniques using "tinted wood-cuts and litho-inked line-blocks".
Dyson remained in Adelaide for only a short period, after which he moved between Melbourne and Sydney depending on where he could find work. In Sydney he stayed with his sister Jean and brother-in-law Lionel Lindsay. Dyson provided illustrations for his brother Edward's book Fact'ry 'ands, published in 1906. He contributed to the Native Companion and The Lone Hand in 1907. In 1908 Dyson's coloured political illustrations were featured on the covers of Randolph Bedford's mining and literary journal, The Clarion.
In May 1909 Dyson held an exhibition of his caricatures at Furlong's Studio in the Royal Arcade, Melbourne. The exhibition was opened by Sir George Reid, previously Prime Minister of Australia, who delivered "a witty and delightful speech". The opening was attended by "a number of leading politicians, actors and other public men... whose grotesque portraits were hanging in the collection". The exhibition was highly successful, with every picture being sold.
On 30 September 1909 Will Dyson and Ruby Lindsay were married at Creswick, in central Victoria. Ruby was the sister of Norman and Lionel Lindsay and a talented black-and-white artist in her own right. In early October 1909, within days of their wedding, Will and Ruby Dyson, accompanied by Norman Lindsay, departed for Europe aboard the steamer R.M.S. Osterley to further their artistic careers.
London
In London Dyson's drawings were initially published in the socialist weekly magazine, The New Age. Soon afterwards he found work with Vanity Fair and the Weekly Dispatch newspaper. Will and Ruby Dyson settled in the fashionable London suburb of Chelsea. In 1911 Ruby gave birth to the couple's only child, a daughter named Betty. It was a period of considerable political upheaval in Britain, with Asquith's Liberal government challenging the powers of the House of Lords, organised agitation for female suffrage and industrial conflict leading to a large number of strikes. In December 1910 Dyson contributed illustrations to The World, a daily strike bulletin published by the printers' union, the London Society of Compositors. In January 1911 the strike sheet was renamed The Daily Herald. During 1911 a consortium of socialists and radical trade unionists began to raise funds to establish a permanent daily newspaper supportive of the labour movement, but independent of the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress. It was decided to retain the name of the printers' union strike sheet and The Daily Herald newspaper was launched in April 1912, with Dyson appointed as its cartoonist-in-chief.Dyson was paid five pounds a week and given carte blanche to engage in the expression of his ideas by the Daily Herald editor, Charles Lapworth. His large-format illustrations were regularly featured in the pages of the newspaper. He developed a dramatic visual language, often featuring symbolic representations of labour and capitalism. His capitalist 'fat man' represented the powerful financial elite, drawn as an overbearing portly figure with top hat and spats, the image of greed in an unjust world. Dyson's working man, the personification of labour, was depicted as young and militant, striving for social justice against the forces of exploitation and disadvantage.
In early January 1913 it was reported in Brisbane's The Worker that "capitalistic newspapers in London declare that King George has been grossly insulted by Will Dyson". His cartoon, published in the Daily Herald, depicted the king expressing astonishment at his subjects "drinking anything so common as rum", and saying: "I never came across any shortage of rum". Dyson's cartoons for the Daily Herald were occasionally reprinted in Australian newspapers associated with the labour movement such as The Australian Worker and The Socialist.
In June 1913 it was reported that Dyson, who "is now doing some of the best cartoon work in London, principally for the Daily Herald", had declined "an offer of £1,500 a year from a Chicago newspaper proprietary". The Daily Herald received financial support from the millionaire American soap manufacturer, Joseph Fels, who had close links with British socialists such as George Lansbury, who edited the newspaper from early in 1914. At one stage when the Herald "was near collapse", Fels agreed to contribute funds to keep it going on the condition that Dyson, who had received "tempting offers from America", should remain at the paper. To ensure this occurred a special fund was created so the artist could be paid at twenty pounds a week.
The fervour and anger of Dyson's Daily Herald cartoons had a remarkable impact in Britain and were admired by workers and intellectuals alike. Anthony Ludovici, writing in The New Age in June 1913, declared that in Dyson's depictions the "capitalist is not only drawn – he is quartered... some of the most passionate, skilful and unmerciful cartoons it has ever been my good fortune to encounter". In 1913 The Daily Herald took advantage of Dyson's success by producing a collection of his cartoons.
War artist
At the outbreak of the World War I, Dyson directed his scathing cartoons at militarism, the evils of war and Kaiser Wilhelm, themes that accorded with the prevailing anti-German sentiment in Britain. In the early months of the war Dyson contributed war cartoons to The Nation and The Daily News. In January 1915 twenty of his drawings were published in a collection entitled Kultur Cartoons. The writer H. G. Wells wrote a foreword to the publication, observing that Dyson "perceives in militaristic monarchy and national pride a threat to the world, to civilisation, and all that he holds dear, and straightaway he sets about to slay it with his pencil". The original drawings from the publication were exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London. The Daily Mail newspaper reproduced one of the 'Kultur' cartoons on the entire back page of its 1 January 1915 edition and praised Dyson as having "the most virile style of any British cartoonist". The Observer newspaper described Dyson "as one of the leading illustrators of the present day" and remarked that "his poignant humour strikes a deeper and more thrilling note than that of any other graphic humorist of to-day".In August 1915 an exhibition of Dyson's war cartoons was held at The Centreway in Collins Street, Melbourne, opened by the Governor of Victoria, Sir Arthur Stanley. In his opening remarks, Stanley paid tribute to the artist, who had "established himself as one of the leading caricaturists of England, and one possessing a style and power of caricature distinctly his own".
In early July 1916 an exhibition of Dyson's works entitled 'War Cartoons' was held at the Savoy Hotel in London. The collection included a number of lithographs. The cartoons were described as "characteristic examples of Mr. Dyson's use of the grotesque for the expression of his idea, which, in this case, is mainly the interpretation of the German mind".
During 1916 Dyson wrote to General Birdwood, the British commander of ANZAC troops on the Western Front, applying to join the Australian Imperial Force as an artist. His stated aim was to "interpret in a series of drawings, for national preservation, the sentiments and special Australian characteristics of our Army". Dyson's proposition received the approval of the Australian prime minister, Andrew Fisher, who requested that the artist be granted an honorary commission in the A.I.F. Dyson was appointed as a temporary and honorary lieutenant in December 1916. The appointment was to be without pay or allowance, with payment only for his carriage and keep. In January 1917 he crossed the English Channel to Calais and proceeded to the Anzac Headquarters at Étaples. Dyson's position as an artist attached to the A.I.F. was formalised in May 1917 when he was appointed as Australia's first official war artist, as part of the Official War Art Scheme.
Dyson mixed with the Australian soldiers, frequently in or near the front line trenches, and produced a large amount of sketches, drawings and paintings. He was inspired by the endurance and achievements of the Australian soldiers, but horrified by the suffering and loss of life he was witnessing. Dyson wrote of the subjects of his artwork: "I never cease to marvel, admire and love with an absolutely uncritical love our louse-ridden diggers, are the stuff of heroes and are the most important thing on earth at this blessed moment". Charles Bean described Dyson as "the most intimate portrayer of the Australian soldier", who felt it was his duty to "give the world a faithful picture of them and of war". Dyson preferred to be amongst the men in the forward positions, and "shunned" army headquarters where he felt "out of place". Bean wrote: "No other official artist, British or Australian, in the Great War saw a tenth part as much of the real Western Front as did Will Dyson". Dyson was wounded twice during the war. In 1917 he was grazed in the face by shrapnel from a shellburst at Messines. Several months later he was wounded by another shellburst at Bellevaarde Ridge near Ypres.
Dyson became a member of an informal group that included the war correspondents, Charles Bean, Keith Murdoch, Henry Gullett and Frederic Cutlack, and the photographer Hubert Wilkins. Dyson's brother-in-law, Daryl Lindsay, had enlisted in February 1916. Lindsay, himself an artist, managed to get a transfer from the Medical Section of the A.I.F. to a position as Dyson's batman.
The Australian writer Vance Palmer wrote of Dyson that "the war made a tragic break" in his friend's life. When Palmer saw Dyson for the first time in three years, at the end of 1918, "his face had a haggard darkness; he was physically depleted; some of the buoyancy had gone out of his spirit".