1. Ian Fairweather was a Scottish painter resident in Australia for much of his life.
17 Facts About Ian Fairweather
1. 2.
Ian Fairweather combined western and Asian influences in his work.
3.
Ian Fairweather was born in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire, Scotland in 1891.
4.
Ian Fairweather's parents returned to India when he was a baby, leaving him in the care of a great-aunt, and he did not see them again until he was 10 years old.
5.
Ian Fairweather received early schooling at Victoria College in Jersey, in London, and in Champery, Switzerland, before attending officer training school at Belfast where his rank was second lieutenant.
6.
Ian Fairweather was captured by the Germans in the first days of World War I in France at the Battle of Mons and spent the next four years in prisoner-of-war camps.
7.
Ian Fairweather was responsible for the illustrations in many POW magazines.
8.
Ian Fairweather began a mural for the Menzies Hotel at this time.
9.
Ian Fairweather then travelled to many places including Shanghai, Peking, Manila, Brisbane, Singapore and Calcutta.
10.
Ian Fairweather served with the British Army, 5th Mahratta Light Infantry with the rank of captain in India from 1941 to 1943.
11.
Ian Fairweather travelled to London via Singapore and returned to Brisbane in 1953, aged 62.
12.
Ian Fairweather built a hut on Bribie Island in Queensland, where he lived for the rest of his life except for visits to India and London during the 1960s.
13.
Ian Fairweather is one of the few European painters to have drawn extensively from Oceanian art.
14.
Ian Fairweather's style has been described as "a paragon of sophisticated clumsiness".
15.
Ian Fairweather often used the cheapest materials such as cardboard or newspaper and poor quality paints, and many of his works were lost or became damaged by the tropical climate in which he lived.
16.
Ian Fairweather is represented in all state galleries in Australia, the Tate Gallery, London, City Gallery, Leicester, and the Ulster Museum, Belfast.
17.
In 1965 Ian Fairweather published The Drunken Buddha which he had translated from the Chinese and illustrated with twelve of his paintings.