Daryl Lindsay was the youngest son in a large family born to Robert Charles Alexander and Jane Elizabeth Lindsay. Daryl and his brothers Percy (the eldest), Lionel, and Norman (qq.v.) achieved distinction in the arts. Ruby (q.v.), also an artist, became well known in artistic circles as the wife of Will Dyson (q.v.). Several years before his death, Daryl objected to the distorted portrayal of his parents given by Norman in My Mask: For What Little I Know of the Man Behind It, An Autobiography (1970). His own account, The Leafy Tree: My Family, takes a sympathetic view and describes Norman as 'undoubtedly the most talented member of the family'.
Daryl claims to have had very little formal schooling: 'any education I got was was derived from the use of the family's library and by listening to the general talk of the household. I read Dickens, Gibbon's Roman Empire, Carlyle and Pepys' Diary before I was sixteen.' He worked on cattle and sheep stations in South Queensland and the Riverina, where he could satisfy his love of horse riding. He enlisted in the A.I.F. in 1915, serving for two years in France, where he often sketched war characters and scenes. Daryl Lindsay's 'Digger' Book (c 1919) contains some of these.
He was an 'offsider' to Will Dyson, the first official war artist to the A.I.F., before being posted as official medical artist to the Australian Section of the Queen Mary Hospital for Wounds of the Face and Jaws sationed at Sidcup, Kent. Here he was responsible for all pictorial and graphic records of soldiers admitted for care. During this time he met Henry Tonks, director of the Slade School of Art at the University of London, who became an important influence on Daryl's future career and a close friend.
After the war Daryl Lindsay became known for his landscapes and equestrian studies. He lived at Mulberry Hill, at Baxter on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria with his wife Joan (q.v.), who has described their lifestyle in Time Without Clocks. Daryl became Director of the National Art Gallery of Victoria (1941-1955) and following his retirement, launched the National Trust of Victoria. He was the son-in-law of A. S. H. Weigall and brother-in-law of Marian and Theyre Weigall (qq.v.)
