Limited Edition Facsimile Etching
SELF PORTRAIT Size: 35.4 x 30.4 cm
Price: $3,300
Date Published: 1974
Reference: Norman Lindsay Etchings: Catalogue Raisonné (Odana Editions and Josef Lebovic Gallery, 2006, cat.317)
Self Portrait is the graphic depiction of an artist in torment. A hunched Norman, clutching his etching needle, is presented, manacled, between the male nude satyr and female nude. This central group forms the picture around which are massed the creatures of his imagination: demons, satyrs, nudes and the ominous figure of the sword-wielding dwarf.
Self Portrait is the most revealing of all Norman's etchings and needling the plate was a lengthy process. In a letter to John Hetherington, Norman discussed the ease with which he wrote compared to the consummate difficulty in etching and specifically referred to Self Portrait:
... I have tried both mediums, and can speak authoritatively on their time factors. I could write the major portion of a novel like Cousin from Fiji in the time it takes me to produce an etching like Self Portrait.
It was an etching that continued to preoccupy him years after it was published. In a letter to sister Mary, written in his old age, Norman wrote:
... Self Portrait was done during the period you stayed with us at Springwood. It reflects the state of my mind during those years, which I'll swear I kept well under cover from detection by others. You, who probably know me better than others, could affirm that, I think. Anyway, it is definitely autobiographical ...
Norman had turned fifty in 1929 and the capacity to create had abandoned him. His distress during this phase (which lasted for several years) is portrayed in Self Portrait. It was this etching that brought the criticism of Norman's work, which had been steadily growing over the years, to a head.
It is difficult now for us to comprehend just how much controversy was engendered by Norman and to what extent he was affected by it. At first he simply shrugged it off, but as the attacks on his work gathered momentum he became disheartened and, in the end, fearful. He had been a target for puritanical-minded officialdom since 1899 when he was first involved in police action. This was the result of a poster he had designed for a company marketing a contraceptive called 'Solvit'. Public outcry caused a progressive Venereal Diseases Bill, which was about to pass through the Victorian Parliament, to be abandoned.
