Ian Fairweather (1891-1974)Spring, 1964 titled on painted artist's label verso: 'Spring'synthetic polymer paint and gouache on cardboard on hardboard96.0 x 67.0cm (37 13/16 x 26 3/8in).注脚PROVENANCEMacquarie Galleries, SydneyPrivate collection, SydneyEXHIBITEDEaster Exhibition, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 3 - 22 April 1974, cat. 7LITERATUREMurray Bail, Fairweather, Murdoch Books, Sydney, pp. 209-10, 259, pl. 181, cat. 208 (illus.)Treania Smith interviewed in 1965 by Hazel de Berg in the Hazel de Berg collection [sound recording], National Library of Australia, 279650 Macquarie Galleries Papers, 1981, Edmund and Joanna Capon Research Library, Art Gallery of New South WalesRELATED WORKSWinter, 1964, synthetic polymer paint and gouache on cardboard on hardboard, 100.0 x 71.0cm, private collection, MelbourneSummer, 1964, synthetic polymer paint and gouache on cardboard on hardboard, 71.7 x 101.6cm, Private collectionAutumn, 1964, synthetic polymer paint and gouache on cardboard on hardboard, 93.0 x 64.5cm, private collection, MelbourneConversation with Edit Daws and the authorWhen Treania Smith, the co-owner with Lucy Swanton of the Sydney art gallery, Macquarie Galleries, visited Lina Bryans' house in Melbourne in 1946, she expressed interest in the work of Ian Fairweather who at the time was renting a room in the house. It would be a very difficult thing, Jock Frater and Bryans told her, but a few days later he said, with some surprise, that Fairweather had 'consented' to put some of his work in a room where she could view it. As she walked down the corridor towards the room, she heard footsteps behind her and sensed it was the reclusive artist but knew that 'like Lot's wife' she had better not look around. In the room she nervously viewed the works, while Fairweather watched her through a chink in the door. She was, she later said, terrified that she might say the wrong thing and lose him.Fairweather refused anyway and soon after left for North Queensland. Then in about 1949, he wrote to Smith out of the blue. 'The wolf is at the door', he wrote and asked if she could sell some paintings for him. She did, very quickly, Hal Missingham buying two for the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Smith sent Fairweather a 'fiver' (£5 note), 'a lot of money in those days,' and from that time on forged a professional and personal relationship with the artist that would last until his death in 1974.Every month she wrote to him, and every month he wrote back. Then the letters stopped and Fairweather suddenly disappeared. 'We thought he was dead', Smith said. Soon after news came that he had been thrown into gaol in Java, having been arrested following his disastrous voyage across the Timor Sea on a home-made raft. After his rescue (by Maie Casey) and subsequent extradition to England, Fairweather returned to Australia in 1953, his family chipping in to pay his fare. He arrived in Sydney but went immediately north, back to Bribie Island in Queensland which he had briefly visited in 1949. This time, he built himself a hut in the middle of ten acres of pine trees, a studio in which he could both live and work, a permanent home. He was 62.Before going to Bribie, Fairweather had sent Smith a telegram, instructing her to send the rest of his money to a bank account in Brisbane. She wrote back to him, telling him to write her a letter, for she had still not managed to set eyes on the artist and could only verify his identity through his handwriting. He did so and the relationship resumed. It was a mutually successful relationship during which time Fairweather painted the works that are generally considered to be his masterpieces. For the first time in his life he had a studio sufficiently isolated to provide him with the solitude necessary to his work, while also maintaining a professional relationship that for once provided financial security.The three Macquarie Galleries women – Smith, Swanton and a junior partner Mary Turner – were more than simply his gallerists, or 'agents', as Smith described them. They were his financial advisers and business managers in all areas of his life, they were his friends and mother surrogates who bought him clothes when needed and soothed his sometimes overly sensitive feelings; and they framed his paintings and promoted them to the most discriminating collectors. By the late 1960s queues would form outside the Gallery long before the doors opened on a Fairweather exhibition.While still a shy person who was extremely discriminating in his personal friendships, by the 1960s Fairweather could tentatively allow a few people into his life: artists and neighbours Lawrence and Edit Dawes, Betty and Roy Churcher and their children, poet Pam Bell and artist Margaret Olley, photographer Robert Walker, gallerist Rudy Komon. Even Treania Smith managed to visit him a few times, though one has the impression that they both preferred to pursue things through their letters. He played chess with Lawrence, drank Rudy's Scotch and red wine and ate Edit's delicious food. Occasionally a neighbour might drop by for a chat, though there were other locals who complained of the squalor in which he lived and the rubbish he accumulated. He gained a reputation as an eccentric and the media began to write stories of the reclusive artist who lived in a humpy. The myth was born. ('He was mighty social for a recluse', Edit Dawes would later say.).In spite of this, he read the newspaper most days and often commented on the critics' view of his work, especially when it was not favourable. He once took umbrage with Elwyn Lynn who compared his work (unfavourably) with that of Mark Tobey, Da Silva and Corneille.'I have never heard of them', he wrote indignantly to his 'dear Miss Smith'. He was loathe to ascribe any particular influence other than Cézanne, stating that he had been a bit like a weather-cock as far as all that was concerned.On 6 December 1964, Fairweather wrote to Smith that he was packing and sending twelve paintings, four of which were 'Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter' (1 to 4). Never known as someone who took great care with his packing, Fairweather was nevertheless anxious and hoped 'they arrive safe'. By this time in his career, he had decided that 'there was only really one subject that he was interested in, by which he meant people'. He had long ago stopped using a sketchbook and painting from a model, a study or nature. Hecomposed from his imagination and memory alone, repeating various motifs of groups – usually two or more – of people. He worked slowly, he said and liked to put a work in progress to one side so that it could 'cook', whilst working on several paintings at the same time. Perhaps it was this unconventional work method that led him to do the four paintings as a series, the only such time he painted four thematically related works. As the works were difficult to identify individually – there is nothing to indicate literal climates or seasons – Fairweather titled them on the back on pieces of cardboard he had cut into strips. However, in spite of their being painted as a themed series, the Macquarie Galleries decided not to exhibit all four together, only Winter and Summer being shown in 1965, while Autumn was shown in 1968 and Spring in 1974. A later illustration of all four together in Bail (pp.208-209) perhaps explains why, for there is an almost overwhelming melancholy when the works are seen as a group: mask-like faces stare back at the viewer, barely human and more the stuff of nightmares. Spring lacks this nightmarish quality and is as a consequence a less haunting work. It is nevertheless a poignant image of two figures, perhaps a mother and child, though the taller figure could be seen to almost break into other forms, other bodies.There is an air of bewilderment to the image as if the artist were puzzling out the relationship. People: the only subject, Fairweather said, for that's what 'it (life? art?) all boiled down to'.Dr Candice Bruce