Ian Fairweather
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- This article is about Ian Fairweather the Australian painter, not Ian Fairweather (presenter) from Adelaide Tonight.
Ian Fairweather was an Australian painter (1891–1974). He was born in Scotland in 1891 and arrived in Melbourne in February 1934. He is considered one of the greatest Australian painters of all time, combining western and Asian influences in his work.
[edit] Life
Ian Fairweather had an exciting, tragic and extremely diverse and interesting life. Abandoned by his parents he was brought up by various relatives in Scotland. He received early schooling in Jersey, London and Chamery, Switzerland before attending officer training school at Belfast where his rank was second lieutenant.
During World War I he was captured by the Germans in France and spent the next four years in POW camps. While captured he was permitted to study drawing and Japanese. He was responsible for the illustrations in the POW magazines.
After the war he studied art in the Netherlands, London and Munich. In 1918 he studied at The Hague Academy and then privately with van Mastenbroek. In 1921 he attended the School of Oriental Studies studying Japanese and between 1920 and 1924 he attended the prestigious Slade School in London. From this time on he began a wandering existence travelling to Canada, Shanghai, Bali, Colombo and Melbourne, Australia. In 1934 in Melbourne he made contact with Melbourne modernist artists and began a mural for the Menzies Hotel.
Later that year he left Australia via Sydney and Brisbane for the Philippines. He then travelled to many places including Shanghai, Peking, Manila, Brisbane, Singapore, Calcutta. He serviced with the British army in India from 1941 to 1943 and after travelling to Cairns, Cooktown, Melbourne and Brisbane he eventually settled into a studio in Melbourne.
By this time his paintings had become widely known and had already been acquired by the CAS, London and the Tate and Leicester galleries.
Desire for adventure saw him move to Darwin where he built a raft and travelled alone to Timor. Deported by the Indonesian authorities he went to London via Singapore and returned to Brisbane in 1953. He built a hut on Bribie Island where he lived for the rest of his life except for visits to India and London during the 1960s.
[edit] Works
One of his paintings, Monastery, acquired by the Australian National Gallery, was described by critics at the time as a masterpiece. It was singled out by fellow Australian artist, James Gleeson who said, “He has fashioned an extraordinary fascinating hybrid from the pictorial traditions of Europe and the calligraphy of China....” (Sydney Morning Herald 14 June 1961)
It is acknowledged that he is one of the few European painters to have assimilated the exotic and primitive islands of the Pacific and the art of the Australian Aborigines.
Fairweather’s work was included in the exhibition, “Australian Painting Today” at the Tate Gallery, London and in the same year was selected to represent Australia at the Bienale de Sao Paulo.
He is represented in all state galleries in Australia, the Tate Gallery, London, Leicester Art Gallery, London and the Ulster Museum, Belfast.
