57 Facts About Will Dyson

William Henry Dyson was an Australian illustrator, artist and political cartoonist who achieved international recognition.

Will Dyson 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.

At the outbreak of World War I Will Dyson directed his scathing artwork at German militarism.

Will Dyson was appointed an honorary lieutenant and joined the Anzac troops in France in January 1917.

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.

Will Dyson's 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.

Will Dyson attended the Albert Park State School until 1892.

Will Dyson exhibited early talents for drawing and writing, for which he was supported and guided by his sisters and elder brothers, Ted and Ambrose.

Will Dyson's father was locally active in the emerging labour movement, as was his older brothers.

Will 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.

Will Dyson had cartoons accepted for publication in the Adelaide weekly The Critic during 1897.

Will Dyson was a keen amateur boxer, as were his older brothers Ambrose and Ted.

Will 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.

Will Dyson became a regular contributor, with conservative politicians being a frequent target of his satire.

Ambrose Will Dyson had been employed as an artist by The Critic, the weekly journal based in Adelaide.

Will Dyson had begun experimenting with colour-printing techniques using "tinted wood-cuts and litho-inked line-blocks".

Will Dyson remained in Adelaide for only a short period, after which he moved between Melbourne and Sydney depending on where he could find work.

Will Dyson provided illustrations for his brother Edward's book Fact'ry 'ands, published in 1906.

Will Dyson contributed to the Native Companion and The Lone Hand in 1907.

In May 1909 Will Dyson held an exhibition of his caricatures at Furlong's Studio in the Royal Arcade, Melbourne.

In London Will Dyson's drawings were initially published in the socialist weekly magazine, The New Age.

Will and Ruby Dyson settled in the fashionable London suburb of Chelsea.

In December 1910 Will Dyson contributed illustrations to The World, a daily strike bulletin published by the printers' union, the London Society of Compositors.

Will 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.

Will Dyson developed a dramatic visual language, often featuring symbolic representations of labour and capitalism.

Will 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.

Will Dyson's 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".

At one stage when the Herald "was near collapse", Fels agreed to contribute funds to keep it going on the condition that Will Dyson, who had received "tempting offers from America", should remain at the paper.

At the outbreak of the World War I, Will 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.

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 Daily Mail newspaper reproduced one of the 'Kultur' cartoons on the entire back page of its 1 January 1915 edition and praised Will Dyson as having "the most virile style of any British cartoonist".

In early July 1916 an exhibition of Will Dyson's works entitled 'War Cartoons' was held at the Savoy Hotel in London.

Will Dyson's stated aim was to "interpret in a series of drawings, for national preservation, the sentiments and special Australian characteristics of our Army".

Will Dyson was appointed as a temporary and honorary lieutenant in December 1916.

Will Dyson was inspired by the endurance and achievements of the Australian soldiers, but horrified by the suffering and loss of life he was witnessing.

Will 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, [they] are the stuff of heroes and are the most important thing on earth at this blessed moment".

Will Dyson preferred to be amongst the men in the forward positions, and "shunned" army headquarters where he felt "out of place".

Will 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.

In June 1919 it was reported that Will Dyson was "in very bad health, and has been forbidden by his medical adviser to do any work for some time to come".

Will Dyson had been "in a state of nervous breakdown" since his wife's death.

One of Will Dyson's cartoons, published in The Daily Herald after his wife's death, is often singled out for its prophetic and vitriolic qualities.

The resolutely independent Dyson resigned from the Daily Herald, unwilling to work under political constraints.

In January 1922 it was reported that Will Dyson was experimenting with stop-motion animation techniques, using figures modelled in plasticine.

The magazine's owners, Odhams Press, had recently terminated the contract of its editor, Horatio Bottomley, and Will Dyson joined on the understanding that John Bull was to be "recast from top to bottom" in order to "make the paper the organ of British Radicalism".

Will Dyson designed the cover of Dr Arthur D'Ombrain's Boomerang Verses, published in London in about June 1924.

In late 1924 Will Dyson accepted an offer of a substantial salary to return to Australia and work for the Herald publishing group in Melbourne.

Will Dyson had been induced back to Australia by Keith Murdoch, editor of The Herald newspaper, to join Percy Leason as a staff cartoonist for the Melbourne Punch.

Will Dyson added: "I have attained the tolerance of middle-age, which is really born of the belief that nobody can do much to change anything".

Will Dyson told the interviewer he was finished with "journalism and drawing for the papers, and am rejoicing in the freedom from the Oriental tyranny of editors".

In early November 1930 it was reported that Will Dyson had completed "some fine satirical drawings, particularly of Hollywood people".

Will Dyson had refused offers for cartoon work and was "specialising in etchings both in Britain and America".

Will Dyson remained with the Daily Herald until his death in January 1938.

Will Dyson died of heart failure on the afternoon of 21 January 1938 at his home in Chelsea, aged 57.

Will Dyson had attended a party the night before and worked in his studio in the morning before he died.

Will Dyson had a clear sense of the importance of his art and its preservation for posterity.

The largest collection of Will Dyson's work is housed in national collections in Canberra, and he is represented in state galleries in Melbourne and Sydney and at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.