[9] Dyson joined the Cannibal Club, a coterie of young artists in Melbourne whose members included Lindsay and his brothers Lionel and Percy, Tom Durkin, Max Meldrum, Hugh McCrae and Alex Sass.

[5][7] Fellow artist Hal Gye, in describing Dyson's skill as a caricaturist, commented: "Relentlees and cruel, he disturbed many a fat politician's quiet calm, and many an actor's contentedness, and yet as bitter as he was with his pencil he was quite the opposite himself".

[1] In 1908 Dyson's coloured political illustrations were featured on the covers of Randolph Bedford's mining and literary journal, The Clarion (at that time Melbourne's answer to The Bulletin).

[24] It was a period of considerable political upheaval in Britain, with Asquith's Liberal government challenging the powers of the House of Lords, organised agitation for female suffrage and industrial conflict leading to a large number of strikes.

It was decided to retain the name of the printers' union strike sheet and The Daily Herald newspaper was launched in April 1912, with Dyson appointed as its cartoonist-in-chief.

His capitalist 'fat man' represented the powerful financial elite, drawn as an overbearing portly figure with top hat and spats, the image of greed in an unjust world.

[2][1][27] In early January 1913 it was reported in Brisbane's The Worker that "capitalistic newspapers in London declare that King George has been grossly insulted by Will Dyson".

[29] In June 1913 it was reported that Dyson, who "is now doing some of the best cartoon work in London, principally for the Daily Herald", had declined "an offer of £1,500 a year from a Chicago newspaper proprietary".

[30] The Daily Herald received financial support from the millionaire American soap manufacturer, Joseph Fels, who had close links with British socialists such as George Lansbury, who edited the newspaper from early in 1914.

At one stage when the Herald "was near collapse", Fels agreed to contribute funds to keep it going on the condition that Dyson, who had received "tempting offers from America", should remain at the paper.

Anthony Ludovici, writing in The New Age in June 1913, declared that in Dyson's depictions the "capitalist is not only drawn – he is quartered... [in] some of the most passionate, skilful and unmerciful cartoons it has ever been my good fortune to encounter".

[2][33] The writer H. G. Wells wrote a foreword to the publication, observing that Dyson "perceives in militaristic monarchy and national pride a threat to the world, to civilisation, and all that he holds dear, and straightaway he sets about to slay it with his pencil".

[35] The Daily Mail newspaper reproduced one of the 'Kultur' cartoons on the entire back page of its 1 January 1915 edition and praised Dyson as having "the most virile style of any British cartoonist".

The Observer newspaper described Dyson "as one of the leading illustrators of the present day" and remarked that "his poignant humour strikes a deeper and more thrilling note than that of any other graphic humorist of to-day".

[36] In August 1915 an exhibition of Dyson's war cartoons was held at The Centreway in Collins Street, Melbourne, opened by the Governor of Victoria, Sir Arthur Stanley.

[32] In his opening remarks, Stanley paid tribute to the artist, who had "established himself as one of the leading caricaturists of England, and one possessing a style and power of caricature distinctly his own".

[35][38] During 1916 Dyson wrote to General Birdwood, the British commander of ANZAC troops on the Western Front, applying to join the Australian Imperial Force (A.I.F.)

[3] Dyson's proposition received the approval of the Australian prime minister, Andrew Fisher, who requested that the artist be granted an honorary commission in the A.I.F.

[43] Charles Bean described Dyson as "the most intimate portrayer of the Australian soldier", who felt it was his duty to "give the world a faithful picture of them and of war".

Bean wrote: "No other official artist, British or Australian, in the Great War saw a tenth part as much of the real Western Front as did Will Dyson".

Dyson became a member of an informal group that included the war correspondents, Charles Bean, Keith Murdoch, Henry Gullett and Frederic Cutlack, and the photographer Hubert Wilkins.

The magazine's owners, Odhams Press, had recently terminated the contract of its editor, Horatio Bottomley, and Dyson joined on the understanding that John Bull was to be "recast from top to bottom" in order to "make the paper the organ of British Radicalism".

[16][63] He had been induced back to Australia by Keith Murdoch, editor of The Herald newspaper, to join Percy Leason as a staff cartoonist for the Melbourne Punch.

[64] The editor of Punch, John Dalley, was willing to give Dyson full freedom to express himself, but the proprietors of the journal exerted pressure to limit his social and political satire.

Eventually "Dyson was edged from his special field into the production of pleasant comic drawings, and he finally accepted this role of entertainer with a wry resignation".

[69] Dyson's drawings for Table Talk ranged from caricatures of theatrical personalities to commentary on local matters, though occasionally he was able to apply his "admonishing satire" upon broader issues such as unemployment and government neglect of education and science.

[1] In August 1929 Dyson delivered a lecture at Melbourne's Kelvin Hall (in Exhibition Street), on 'The Arts in Australia: A Plea and an Indictment', at the invitation of the educational committee of the Victoria League.

In late 1933 he published a book called Artist Among the Bankers, a sharp critique of banking and the prevailing monetary system (and which included an explanation of Clifford Douglas' Social Credit theory).

[84] After Dyson's death in 1938, fellow-artist Norman Lindsay said of the late artist's approach to cartooning, he "would rather face any brutal reality than escape it in false sentiment".

In 1916, when he applied to go to the Western Front as an artist, he expressed a wish "to interpret in a series of drawings, for national preservation, the sentiments and special Australian characteristics of our Army".