George Washington Thomas Lambert was born on 13 September 1873 at St Petersburg in Russia. He was the fourth child and posthumous son of American railway engineer George Washington Lambert and his English wife, Annie Matilda Firth. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Württemberg, Germany, with his maternal grandfather, and then to England, where George was educated at Kingston College, Yeovil, Somerset. On 20 January 1887 the Lambert family set sail for Australia, reaching Sydney in the BENGAL and settled at Eurobla, near Warren, a sheep-station owned by George’s great-uncle, Robert Firth. After eight months, Lambert returned to Sydney to work as a clerk with W and A McArthur & Co, soft goods merchants, and in 1889-91 in the Shipping Master’s Office. He attended night classes conducted by Julian Ashton for the Art Society of New South Wales and worked as a station-hand for about two years. These experiences of bush life gave him an enduring love for horses and rural themes. Ashton’s instruction emphasised draughtsmanship, studying casts from the antique and drawing from life. In 1895 Lambert began contributing pen-and-ink cartoons to the Bulletin and produced illustrations to books published by Angus & Robertson. In 1900 Lambert won the first travelling art scholarship awarded by the Society of Artists, married Amelia Beatrice Absell and set sail for England. Lambert then studied at Colarossi’s atelier and at the Atelier Delécluze. In Paris, Lambert studied the Old Masters and would emulate Titian in The Sonnet (National Gallery of Australia) and Whistler in one of his own favourite works of this period, La Blanchisseuse. Back in London inn 1913, Lambert contributed illustrations to Cassell’s Magazine (1900) and the Pall Mall Magazine. He supplemented his income by work as a riding instructor and, succeeding Frank Brangwyn as a teacher at the London School of Art. Of Lambert’s portraiture, his two most important commissions were George Reid and an equestrian portrait of King Edward VII. Lambert also designed some of the interior decorations for the liner ALSATIAN. By the outbreak of the Great War, he was a frequent exhibitor, and a member of the Chelsea Arts Club, an associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, a council-member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers and a founder of the Modern Society of Portrait Painters. During the war, he supervised timber-felling in Wales and in 1917 was appointed official war artist to the Australian Imperial Force. He was commissioned to execute twenty-five sketches and to paint The Charge of the Light Horse at Beersheba. He arrived at Alexandria, Egypt, in January 1918. Despite contracting malaria, he embarked for Marseilles, France, in May with over 130 sketches, many of which were exhibited later that year at the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists’ War and Peace Exhibition. In January 1919, he visited Gallipoli on the historical mission with Charles Bean. After recovering from dysentery in Cairo, he visited Palestine, returning to London in August. His many meticulous and often spirited sketches made at a time when he was ‘ridiculously happy’ were to serve as the foundation for four other large battle-pictures now in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, and a fine portrait A Sergeant of the Light Horse (National Gallery of Victoria). His AIF appointment ended on 31 March 1920. Lambert returned to Australia in 1921, arriving in Melbourne where a retrospective exhibition was held in May at the Fine Arts Society Gallery, before he settled in Sydney. He was elected ARA in 1922. He settled down to portraiture and rural landscapes. He exhibited annually with the Society of Artists and from 1926 with the Contemporary Group which he formed with Thea Proctor. With Sydney Ure Smith, he helped to keep the Society of Artists liberal in outlook and supported such younger artists as Roy de Maistre. Lambert gained several sculpture commissions – a war memorial for Geelong Church of England Grammar School, Victoria, an unknown soldier for St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, and a statue of Henry Lawson for Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, Sydney (1930). In executing the last two he had the assistance of Arthur Murch. He was inexperienced and the physical labour of handling the clay proved too much for his constitution. He died suddenly on 29 May 1930 at Cobbity, near Camden. He was buried in the Anglican section of South Head Cemetery.