Michael C.
Yelp
The Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum on 42 acres of landscaped grounds are open 7 days a week. The property has become a popular tourist attraction not only for the art work on display but also for the beautiful gardens and bushwalk. Also on the property is Lindsay's Cafe, attached to Norman Lindsay's old etching studio.
Australians know of Norman Lindsay as an iconic and controversial artist in the early to mid-1900's who moved his home and studio to Faulconbridge in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. It is about halfway up the mountain to Katoomba on the Great Western Highway. In Faulconbridge, take the Gross Road exit (there's a traffic light, and a school on the corner) and go right at the fork on Chapman Parade and left on Norman Lindsay Crescent. It's maybe two miles from the highway, but well worth it. Kids will like it too. I lived in the area for about a year, so I know.
Lindsay's work ranged from nude paintings and sculptures to children's stories (The Magic Pudding is an Australian childhood favorite from 1918, and is still popular today). This incredibly diverse and talented artist produced so much art in so many different forms: writing, oil and watercolor painting, etchings, carvings, ship models, and sculptures of different material. Victorian era thinkers considered the nudity in some of Lindsay's work as blasphemous. According to Wikipedia, the house (a sandstone cottage) and surrounding land was purchased by Lindsay and his wife, Rose, in 1913 from Francis Foy who built the property in 1900 as a half-way house. The estate was repaired and transformed over the year, with Lindsay adding classical colonnades, fountains, paths and sculptures. Lindsay remained living on the property until his death in 1969. In 1970, pursuant to Lindsay's previous proposal, the Australian National Trust purchased the property to be used as a historic tourist attraction. The oil painting studio has been preserved as it was at the time of his death with unfinished oils and materials.
If you are contemplating visiting, check out the movie Sirens, which was filmed at the property in 1994. The film stars Hugh Grant as an Anglican priest newly arrived from England, asked to visit a notorious artist, based on Norman Lindsay, out of the Anglican Church's concern about blasphemous artwork the artist planed to exhibit. The characters frolic all around the property, and you will enjoy seeing the place in person. When you walk around the property the sculptures are still there. You will get a taste of natural Australian bushland. The east coast bushland is pretty much all the same really, so your 15 minute walk will tell you most of what you need to know.
Sirens, along with Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bitter Moon -- all released in the U.S. within weeks of each other -- were the films that brought Hugh Grant to the attention of American audiences. Subsequently, Hugh Grant's infamous real-life liaison on Sunset Boulevard fell him out of favor with the public, including girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley. He apparently didn't get the point of "controversy" when making Sirens.
