St Jean de Luz

Arriving in France in 1922 on a Society of Artists Travelling Scholarship, Roy de Maistre was introduced to the Basque town of St Jean de Luz in 1923 by his first cousin, Camilla Keogh. Camilla and her husband had retired there the previous year and between 1923 and 1926, de Maistre divided his time between this fashionable town on the Bay of Biscay and Paris. After a four year stay in Australia, on his return to France in 1929, de Maistre was a regular visitor to this town during the 1930s. The Leng family (the brothers Basil, Kyrle, Robert and their sister Ruth) were friends de Maistre had met in London. Basil had taken a property at St Jean de Luz in the 1920s, which de Maistre would often stay at. It is interesting to note that in de Maistre's retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1960, four images of St Jean de Luz were exhibited including one on loan from Basil Leng.