Ian Fairweather - Life

Life

Ian Fairweather received early schooling at Victoria College, 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 prisoner-of-war 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 of Fine Art in London. From this time on he began a wandering existence travelling to Canada, Shanghai, Bali, Colombo and Melbourne. In 1934, in Melbourne, he made contact with 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 served 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 City Gallery.

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.