Ruby Lindsay

Robert and Jane Lindsay's seventh child and second daughter, Ruby, was born on 20 March 1885. She left home for Melbourne at 16 and resided for a time with her brother Percy, while attending the National Gallery School. She drew occasionally for the Hawklet, the Bulletin and regularly for the Adelaide satirical journal, the Gadfly (1906), illustrated books such as 'Rudd's' Back at Our Selection (1906) and William Moore's Studio Sketches (1906), and designed posters. On 30 September 1909 she married Will Dyson at Creswick and travelled with him and her brother Norman to London. In England she continued with book illustrations, particularly of children's books. Her daughter Elizabeth was born on 11 September 1911. After the war her brother Daryl took her to visit relations in Belfast and Dublin. There she caught the influenza virus then sweeping Europe and died in Chelsea a few days later on 12 March 1919.

Of shy, retiring disposition, Ruby Lindsay was described by Henry Tonks as 'the most beautiful creature I ever looked at'. Many others remarked on her unusual beauty. Haldane MacFall described her as 'one of the most remarkable women-artists with pen-line now living' in A History of Painting (1911). Shortly after her death Will Dyson published Poems: In Memory of a Wife (1919) and Cecil Palmer produced The Drawings of Ruby Lind (1920).

Creswick Museum has two of Ruby's works on display. 

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