Nude Frolic

NORMAN LINDSAY (1879-1969)

Nude Frolic

oil on canvas
48.0 x 55.0 cm
signed lower right: Norman Lindsay

Provenance:
Private collection, Sydney

Estimate: $55000 - 65000

Norman Lindsay’s lifelong fascination with both ancient mythology and the female form was almost certainly initiated by visits to the Ballarat Gallery as a young man with his Grandfather. At the age of seventy, Lindsay reflected ‘there was for me, one picture, the Ajax and Cassandra by Solomon J. Solomon… the special glory of it was the naked body of Cassandra apexed by a pair of wonderful breasts.’1

 

Lindsay later became widely read on many subjects, including Greek mythology, to the extent that friends would often seek out his opinion. His friend of thirty years Douglas Stewart recalled ‘He was in fact the best-read man I have known; and, moreover, remembered in minute detail most of what he had read, so that if you wanted to clarify your ideas on Homer or Euripides, Plautus or Petronius, Goethe or Rabelais… or anyone of note in English literature from Chaucer to Robert Louis Stevenson – to say nothing of the philosophy of Plato or Nietzche... here was someone who could talk… as an expert.’2

 

Lindsay’s extensive knowledge of ancient Greek mythology invariably infiltrated much of his artistic output and formed the basis of many works. Nude Frolic is such a work.

 

According to Greek legend, Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking, wine, of ritual madness and revelry. In Roman culture, Dionysus was known as Bacchus. The Bacchanalian festivities were often chaotic affairs which involved bountiful supplies of wine and encouraged various states of undress. These celebrations became so unruly that in 186 BC senatorial legislation attempted to bring these events under control, under threat of the death penalty. In art, Bacchus is frequently represented as the central figure, with a wreath of grapes and leaves, holding a wine goblet, or a thyrsus, which was a pine staff tipped with fennel and often wound with ivy. Bacchus appeared in many of Lindsay’s works, however with the focus in Nude Frolic being the central woman riding a horse and holding a large goblet of wine aloft, it appears that this work instead portrays a gathering of Bacchanalian followers, enjoying to excess the grape nectar from the gods.

 

Lindsay’s particular disdain for wowserism and puritanical moral institutions with their foundations in British culture, meant he was unrelenting in creating images which promoted liberated sexuality. As a result, controversy was never far from his nude images and a Bacchannalian work, similarly themed to Nude Frolic, became front page news in 1966; 

‘Vice squad detectives took photographs today of a 36-year-old Norman Lindsay painting in the Southern Cross Gallery, Southern Cross Hotel… following an anonymous complaint by a woman. The painting, Bacchannalian Festival, is of six girls and four men, all naked, standing and sitting near a horse… The police questioned Mr S.K. Farrell, the gallery manager, and left after Mr Farrell had shown them reference books detailing Lindsay’s reputation in the art world.’3

 

Today, Lindsay’s major oil paintings are deemed to ‘pulsate with life and vitality’4 and can be found in the artist’s former home ‘Springwood’, now the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum, Faulconbridge, in addition to important private collections, and the collections of The University of Melbourne and the Art Gallery of Ballarat.

 

 

 

Footnotes:

1. Bloomfield, L., Norman Lindsay: Oil paintings 1889-1969, Odana Editions, Bungendore, 2006, p.12

2. Stewart, D., Norman Lindsay: A Personal Memoir, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2012, p.37

3. Vice Squad strikes again, The Canberra Times, Thursday 17 November 1966, p.1

4. Bloomfield, L., ‘Oil Paintings’ in Bloomfield, L., (ed), The World of Norman Lindsay, Macmillan, Sydney, revised edition, 1995, p.65

 

Marina Brennan, BA (Hons)