Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Portrait of Henry Lawson

Portrait of Henry Lawson

1922

Woodcut on paper
Bequest of Sir William Dixson, 1952
DL PXX 85, Volume 10, 16b

Lawson’s was a sad, slow demise. He was one of Australia’s most acclaimed and cherished poets and writers, yet for many years he suffered from ill health, depression and alcoholism. On 2 September 1922, at the age of 55 he died of a cerebral haemorrhage.

Lionel Lindsay published this woodcut in the week Henry Lawson died. The print is based on a number of drawings that Lindsay made of Lawson some 20 years before, around the turn of the century when the two men first met. Lindsay had arrived in Sydney to work as an illustrator, and he and Lawson often contributed to the same periodicals that were published in Sydney, notably the Bulletin and the Lone Hand.

Henry Lawson’s first published poem was, 'A Song of the Republic', published in the Bulletin, on 1 October 1887. He was 21 years old.

Lionel Lindsay and Henry Lawson collaborated on a 1907 short story, The Romance of the Swag, with Lindsay creating the woodcut illustrations for the book.

Some of Lawson’s most celebrated works include his short story The Drover’s Wife, and the poems ‘Andy’s Gone with Cattle’ and ‘Faces in the Street’.

Henry Lawson is buried at Waverley Cemetery, between Clovelly and Bronte beaches in Sydney. His grave is sited high on a hill, overlooking the ocean.

Henry, the first child of Louisa and Peter Lawson was born in a tent in the NSW town of Grenfell in 1867, just metres from the mineshafts. His father Peter had brought the family to the central west of NSW, where rich yields of gold were being found.

Henry Lawson attended a number of schools as his family was always on the move. He was nine when he attended his first school, Eurunderee Public School in NSW’s central west. Altogether, Lawson spent only three years of his life in school.