Land of the Sylphs

Land of the Sylphs is a 1920 etching that depicts a large crowd of nude sylphs luxuriating in a fantastical landscape dotted with Neo-classical follies. The figures and landscape are delineated with a fine black line and minimal shading. Sylphs are fairy-like, female air elementals that were first described by the alchemist, astrologer and physician Paracelsus in the 16th century. They were studied and seriously believed in until rationalism and empiricism took hold the late 18th century. By then, they had become ‘machinery for the playwright’, with Norman Lindsay’s interpretation consistent with this. Land of the Sylphs acts as a perfect excuse for him to indulgently depict a multitude of nubile female nudes populating a new Arcadia, a fantasy land of a sex-obsessed artist’s imagination. Is Lindsay’s strange creation sexist, silly, a fascinating (art) historical document, or all three?

Despite his apparently irreverent interpretation of the sylph, Lindsay was a sincere believer in the paranormal. After the death of his brother Reginald in the First World War, he turned to spiritualism for consolation, a not uncommon response to that tragedy (writer Arthur Conan-Doyle was another famous believer). Through an Ouija board operated by his wife Rose, Lindsay believed himself to be communicating with his dead brother, as well as with Apollo and William Shakespeare. Norman Lindsay was always far more interested in fantasy subject matter than his elder brother Lionel. This difference in opinion went deeper than just their art however. Lionel strongly disagreed with Norman’s dabbling’s in spiritualism, sadly leading to ‘a permanent rupture’ in the brothers’ long friendship.

Sources:

Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lindsay-norman-alfred-7757

Vaughan, Robert A. "Hours with the Mystics", Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 39 (September 1856), pp. 36–49.

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   August 2018