Artist Profiles

Lyndon Dadswell
1908-1986

ART40930 Lyndon Dadswell
Stretcher bearers
AWM ART40930

Lyndon Dadswell, one of Australia's most accomplished sculptors, was the first sculptor to be appointed an official war artist during the Second World War.

Dadswell was born in 1908 and studied at the Julian Ashton School from 1923 to 1925 and at the East Sydney Technical College from 1926 to 1929. He was a student of the influential sculptor Rayner Hoff, and in 1929, at the age of 21, he worked as an assistant to Paul Montford on the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. Dadswell was responsible for the 12 sandstone panels of the inner frieze in the shrine's interior.

After winning the Wynne Prize for sculpture in 1933, Dadswell traveled to London to study at the Royal Academy, returning to Sydney in 1938 to teach at the National Art School. He continued to teach intermittently until 1967.

Dadswell enlisted in the 2nd Division AIF in August 1940 and fought in Greece, Libya and Syria, where he was seriously wounded on 22 June 1941 while fighting the Vichy French. After recuperating he was promoted to lieutenant and commissioned as an official war artist. He worked at the AIF's Middle East headquarters in Cairo, where he shared a studio for some time with Ivor Hele. He returned to Australia in 1942, and resigned from his commission as an official artist in December.

AWM P02479.005
Lyndon Dadswell inspecting his plaster model of the sculpture, Stretcher Bearers
AWM P02479.005

In the short time he was in the Middle East, Dadswell produced 12 sculptures of Australians in Greece and the Middle East. These embody the qualities he admired most in the Australian soldiers he had encountered, strength, endurance and masculinity. They are some of the most powerful and striking works of art in the Memorial's collection.

Dadswell's plaster sculptures have now all been cast in bronze as part of the Memorial's sculpture casting program.