George Washington Lambert - The official artist, 1921, oil on canvas
George Washington Thomas Lambert ARA (1873 – 1930) was an Australian painter, illustrator, and cartoonist. He is remembered as a portrait painting and as a war artist during the First World War. Lambert was born in St Petersburg and raised in Württemberg, Germany and then Somerset, England. At the age of 14 (1887), he migrated to Sydney, Australia with his grandparents. The young Lambert worked for a short time on rural station properties. This experience began an appreciation for horses and rural scenes. In 1894, he first started exhibiting his paintings and in the next year he started to contributing cartoons to the Bulletin. Between 1896 and 1900, Lambert studied at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney. He spent a year in Paris (1901) before moving to London where he exhibited at the Royal Academy. Lambert was appointed an official Australian war artist in 1917 during the First World War. He visited in Gallipoli and Palestine. Lambert then returned to Australia. Much of his work was focused on portraiture and in in 1927 he won the Archibald Prize.
