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Will Dyson (1880-1938)
Will Dyson was born in Ballarat, Australia on 3 September 1880 and educated in Melbourne. A brother of the novelist Edward Dyson, he moved in the circle of the Lindsay family of illustrators, and began his career by contributing drawings to the Sydney Bulletin and the Melbourne Herald. Following their marriage in September 1909, Dyson and Ruby Lindsay migrated to England, and he was soon employed by Lord Northcliffe. The front page of the Daily Herald proved to be a more suitable outlet for his savage work and, between 1912 and 1919, he became its regular political cartoonist. The Herald was considered a Socialist paper with a small readership but a great influence, and Dyson’s work attracted the attention of such writers as Chesterton, Bennett, Shaw and Wells.
And as he was cultivated by the left wing intelligentsia, so he, in turn, befriend��ed David Low on his arrival in London in 1919. During the First World War, he was appointed Official War Artist to the Australian Imperial Forces, and returned to Australia for five years, between 1925 and 1930. Remembering the advice of Bennett, that he should make more of his talent, and the suggestion of Frank Brangwyn, that he should take up etching, he began to produce satirical prints which may be likened to those of Max Beerbohm at his most robust. He exhibited these with great success in the United States, and also exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, the Royal Hibernian Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy. He rejoined the Daily Herald in 1930 and, though the best of his work had been done, remained with the paper until his death on 21 January 1938.
