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Lot Essay
Ian Fairweather was born in Scotland, and was raised by aunts until the age of ten while his mother and father – a doctor with the Twenty-Second Punjabi Rifles, were away in India. As a child, Fairweather kept to himself and this preference for solitude, combined with an innately restless spirit, continued throughout his life, which reads like something from the pages of an adventure story. He travelled extensively – from the United Kingdom, to Canada, China, Bali, Australia, the Philippines, India and beyond – variously living in a derelict movie theatre, an abandoned railway truck, and a boat wreck washed up on the shore. His greatest adventure took place in April 1952 when he left Darwin on Australia’s northern coast, bound for Timor, on a raft ‘built … with three old aircraft fuel tanks … and [a] minute sail … fashioned from three panels of old parachute canopy’ (‘Timor Sea Crossed on Raft – Scottish Artist’s Feat’, The Times, 9 August 1952, reproduced in Murray Bail, Fairweather, Murdoch Books, Millers Point, 2000, p. 103). Fairweather had researched the journey and studied the tides, calculating that he would reach his destination within ten days (Nourma Abbott-Smith, Ian Fairweather: Profile of an Artist, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1978, p. 104). Sixteen days later however, ‘he collapsed on the sand in the moonlight … at Roti, the last dot on the map west of Indonesian Timor’ (Bail, op. cit.) before the vast Indian Ocean.
Fairweather’s first visit to China was in 1929, but his interest in the art, culture and history of the country began during World War I, when, as a prisoner of war in Germany he had access to books including Ernest Fenollosa’s recently published Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art (Joanna Capon, ‘The China Years’, Bail, Murray., et. al., Fairweather, Art & Australia Books in association with Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1994, p. 63). He was inspired to study Mandarin after the war – becoming sufficiently fluent to translate (and illustrate) the biography of the Great Master Chi-tien, the Drunken Buddha (see Bail, op. cit. ch. 17) – when he also undertook formal art studies at the Slade School of Fine Art. Depicting a busy interior, Café in Rice Field, 1935, was painted in Beijing, where Fairweather lived between 1935-36. Characteristic of his work at the time, quick pencil lines, which sketch out the composition, are visible beneath daubs of subtle colour, some brushed onto the surface and others applied with a palette knife. The wooden end of his paintbrush pulled through the paint delineates the physical and facial features of the figures. In addition to emphasising the importance of drawing within his practice, this technique adds to the textural richness of the work, contrasting with areas of the painting’s ground that are left untouched and exposed. Four of Fairweather’s earliest commercial exhibitions were at the Redfern Gallery, London (Solo exhibitions were held in 1936, 1937, 1942 and 1948); although Café in Rice Field is documented in the Redfern Gallery’s record books, it is thought to have been sold directly and not in a formal exhibition (we are grateful to Murray Bail for sharing this information and his research about this painting).
In 1953 Fairweather returned to Australia and settled on Bribie Island, off the coast of southern Queensland, where he lived for the rest of his life in a pair of thatched huts, painting by the light of a hurricane lamp. Exhibiting regularly at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney, Fairweather’s work was admired by curators, critics and fellow artists alike and the 1960s saw his art acknowledged in significant ways. Paintings were included in the landmark exhibition Recent Australian Painting at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (1961), the São Paulo Biennial (1963) and in 1965, the first retrospective exhibition of his art was presented at the Queensland Art Gallery. His art continues to be highly regarded in Australia, where it is widely exhibited and collected.
We are very grateful to Kirsty Grant for preparing this catalogue entry.
Fairweather’s first visit to China was in 1929, but his interest in the art, culture and history of the country began during World War I, when, as a prisoner of war in Germany he had access to books including Ernest Fenollosa’s recently published Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art (Joanna Capon, ‘The China Years’, Bail, Murray., et. al., Fairweather, Art & Australia Books in association with Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1994, p. 63). He was inspired to study Mandarin after the war – becoming sufficiently fluent to translate (and illustrate) the biography of the Great Master Chi-tien, the Drunken Buddha (see Bail, op. cit. ch. 17) – when he also undertook formal art studies at the Slade School of Fine Art. Depicting a busy interior, Café in Rice Field, 1935, was painted in Beijing, where Fairweather lived between 1935-36. Characteristic of his work at the time, quick pencil lines, which sketch out the composition, are visible beneath daubs of subtle colour, some brushed onto the surface and others applied with a palette knife. The wooden end of his paintbrush pulled through the paint delineates the physical and facial features of the figures. In addition to emphasising the importance of drawing within his practice, this technique adds to the textural richness of the work, contrasting with areas of the painting’s ground that are left untouched and exposed. Four of Fairweather’s earliest commercial exhibitions were at the Redfern Gallery, London (Solo exhibitions were held in 1936, 1937, 1942 and 1948); although Café in Rice Field is documented in the Redfern Gallery’s record books, it is thought to have been sold directly and not in a formal exhibition (we are grateful to Murray Bail for sharing this information and his research about this painting).
In 1953 Fairweather returned to Australia and settled on Bribie Island, off the coast of southern Queensland, where he lived for the rest of his life in a pair of thatched huts, painting by the light of a hurricane lamp. Exhibiting regularly at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney, Fairweather’s work was admired by curators, critics and fellow artists alike and the 1960s saw his art acknowledged in significant ways. Paintings were included in the landmark exhibition Recent Australian Painting at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (1961), the São Paulo Biennial (1963) and in 1965, the first retrospective exhibition of his art was presented at the Queensland Art Gallery. His art continues to be highly regarded in Australia, where it is widely exhibited and collected.
We are very grateful to Kirsty Grant for preparing this catalogue entry.