Lyndon Dadswell CMG, sculptor, studied at the Julian Ashton School before working with Rayner Hoff from 1926 to 1929 and Paul Montford from 1929 to 1935. In 1933 he won the Wynne Prize, and was awarded a scholarship that enabled him to study and travel in London and Europe. After war service, including a period as an official war artist, he made the King George Memorial in Sydney. Ten years later, he completed the Newcastle Memorial before taking up grants to study in the USA, UK and Europe. He taught at the National Art School in Sydney from 1937 to 1967, retiring as its Head. A retrospective exhibition of his (sometimes controversially modernist) work was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1978. The following year Margel Hinder observed that ‘there is hardly a sculptor in Sydney who is not indebted to Lyndon in some measure’.
As a sculpted self portrait, this work is a great rarity in Australian art history.
Purchased 2004
© Estate of Lyndon Dadswell
Lyndon Dadswell CMG (age 31 in 1939)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Spanning the 1880s to the 1930s, this collection display celebrates the innovations in art – and life – introduced by the generation of Australians who travelled to London and Paris for experience and inspiration in the decades either side of 1900.
This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits in Australia, from the colonial period to the present
