Australian painter. He is considered one of the greatest Australian painters of all time, combining western and Asian influences in his work.
Fairweather received early schooling at Victoria College, Jersey, London and in Champéry, 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, Munich and The Hague Academy. From 1924 he began a wandering existence travelling the world. Desire for adventure eventually saw him move to Darwin, Australia, 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.
One of his paintings, Monastery, acquired by the National Gallery of Australia, was described by critics at the time as a masterpiece. 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. His style has been described as “a paragon of sophisticated clumsiness”. He often used the cheapest materials, such as cardboard or newspaper and poor quality paints, and he lost or damaged many works due to the effects of the tropical climate in which he lived.
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 São Paulo Art Biennial. He is represented in all state galleries in Australia, the Tate Gallery, London, City Gallery, Leicester, and the Ulster Museum, Belfast.
He died on 20 May 1974.
Link to Wikipedia biography