‘OUR GREATEST PAINTER’: 1962-65
Above: Robert Walker, Ian Fairweather on Bribie Island, Queensland, c. 1966. Gelatin silver photograph. National Art Archive, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. © Robert Walker / Copyright Agency, 2019. Opposite: Ian Fairweather, Portrait of the Artist, 1962. Synthetic polymer paint and gouache on cardboard mounted on composition board. 92.4 x 70.9 cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1976. © Ian Fairweather / DACS. Copyright Agency, 2019. (See letters 163, 187.) Following spread: Ian Fairweather, Epiphany, 1962. Synthetic polymer paint. 139.6 x 203.2 cm. Purchased 1962. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. © Ian Fairweather / DACS. Copyright Agency, 2019. (See letters 163, 173, 174, 175, 180.)
Above: Letter, Ian Fairweather to Margaret Olley, 24 December [1963], with Fairweather’s Chinese name ‘Fei Huan’ written in thick marker pen. National Art Archive, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. © Fairweather Estate. Letter 206. Previous spread: Ian Fairweather, House by the Sea, 1965. Synthetic polymer paint and gouache on cardboard on composition board. 131.3 x 193.3 cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1971. © Ian Fairweather / DACS. Copyright Agency, 2019. (See letter 244.)
10 JANUARY 1962 – 14 JULY 1965
FAIRWEATHER’S ‘MAGNIFICENT’ sell-out exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in 1962 created a sensation, with people queuing overnight in the hope of securing works that are now recognised as masterpieces. Shalimar (1961–62) was acquired by the Australian National Gallery in Canberra (now the National Gallery of Australia), Epiphany (1961–62) by the Queensland Art Gallery, Reclining Figure (c. 1959–60) by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and Monsoon (1961–62) by the young critic Robert Hughes.
From this point on Fairweather would be included as a matter of course in all significant surveys of Australian art. In his influential book Australian Painting, 1788–1960 (1962), Bernard Smith described Fairweather as ‘one of the most inventive, personal and original of the semi-abstract painters at work in Australia today’. There were numerous articles about Fairweather in the popular press and in 1962 he was included in Who’s Who in Australia for the first time. He was the subject of the cover story for the inaugural issue of Art and Australia (1963) and was featured in a six-part ABC Television series on modern Australian painters presented by Laurie Thomas, a longstanding champion of his art.
In 1965, on Thomas’s initiative, a Fairweather retrospective opened at the Queensland Art Gallery and toured throughout the country; University of Queensland Press published Fairweather’s Chinese translation The Drunken Buddha, and there was an accompanying exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney. He would win the W. D. and H. O. Wills Prize for Turtle and Temple Gong (1965). But the acclaim also troubled Fairweather, who lamented the intrusions it brought into his world.
159. To Annette Waters
Dear Q Rain wind leaden skys and shivering cold–For about 3 years we have missed out on the monsoon and everywhere the swamps have been dry–all through the year–I remember one year catching an eel in one of them–It must have been lying buried all this time–along with the toads & newts They will all be coming out now–But for me its no fun–This thatch makes the house too dark, and to lighten it I put in a skylight with polyphone–The storm has broken it and I woke up to find all my painting table flooded–A frantic morning climbing a shakey ladder to try and patch it from inside–but a makeshift job–Nothing for it but to climb on the old thatch and do it from outside–it was a mistake in any case because it makes reflections and I cant see what I am doing–So had to block it up again–Going to be quite a problem–may spoil the thatch if am not very careful–I think I told you the Hong Kong Bookstore sent me a Christmas card now they have sent stacks of catalogues of books in English and Chinese–some from Peking and wood block prints–There are all Mao Tse Tung’s works in English–rather like to see those–At last I find out how Mao spells his name its 毛 Mao which means hair (and M hasn’t got any) that is his family name–澤東 Tse, Tung his personal names, they mean choose, east, of course the meaning has no connection with the name just the sound.1 It is one of the snags when translating one comes on a string of characters with nothing to show that they are a name or names and one tries to translate and they make nonsense–till one realizes one’s got a name I have finished my long book the adventures of a Chinese Casanova–very bored with it and now since the HK books still not arrived am starting a 14 vol. History of the Ching–They are the people who built the Wall, and it starts off at your old holiday resort Shan–hai–kwan which means Mountain, Sea, Shut2–Place names unlike personal names usually make some sort of sense–I wont attempt to translate it (i.e. write it out) just read it through for practise–It is stiff going–some letters not in my dictionary (which has 4000)–but really feel I have come a long way–and begin to grasp the sense, even if I have to jump a good many characters–No wonder no foreigners not brought up in the country ever really get to know Chinese–It is like trying to work out the tune on a gramophone record by studying the sound track, but not hearing it–And no one has ever succeeded, and never will–in writing it out in Roman letters3–Mao for instance–could be any of some 40 Maos and if it were Chi it would be one of some hundreds That is why I’m so pleased to pin down Mr Mao at last, and know which of all the Maos he really is–Hong Kong means smelly port or ‘Fragrant harbour’–which you prefer–Shang hai–is just ‘on the sea’. But Tien tsin–I have never seen written–so no saying what it could mean4–perhaps you heard it–from the sound you could never guess Peking is ‘north capital’–Nan King = South Capital–etc etc. All three of the books I have translated are about Hangchou–which the Chinese regard as their show place–Monasteries round a lake and in the hills–very lovely–but as nothing compared to a little place no one ever speaks about I discovered on the Ta Hū5–Can you imagine, a walled city–and you sail into it from the lake through the wall–and inside all the streets are water–a Chinese Venice–But what Knocked me for a loop was the street of Pailous, the [drawing] 3 arch memorial gates they put up6–Peking has some painted wooden ones These ones were of carved stone–of various colours and there were at least 50 of them all in a row all down the street–And why? it was more like a vacant lot than a street, a place of rubbish and weeds–squeezed up against the city wall–and all this priceless art squandered on a rubbish dump–That I thought is really China–so splendidly unplanned–How can this genius for the unexpected–the home of Zen (Chan) be fitted into a Marxist straight jacket–Pardon the lecture, waiting for the paints to dry out.
Yrs Ian
1 Tse 澤 in Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) means ‘brilliance’ or ‘radiance’.
2 Shanhaiguan, literally ‘mountain-sea pass’, is the easternmost pass of the Ming dynasty Great Wall that meets the Bohai Sea in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province. Queenie’s husband served in North China, 1911–14. Queenie, Walter and their son Wynyard lived at 7 Elgin Avenue in the British concession of Tientsin (Tianjin), an historic Treaty Port. Shanhaiguan is not far from Tianjin. Photographs of the pass and the Great Wall in Queenie’s album indicate the holidays to which Fairweather refers.
3 Systems of using the Latin alphabet to write Chinese were first developed by Jesuit missionaries. The most widely used of the more recent systems are Wade-Giles and Hanyu Pinyin.
4 Tianjin literally means ‘heavenly ferry site’, or Ferry Site of the Emperor.
5 Taihu or Lake Tai in Jiangsu Province.
6 The ceremonial arches generally commemorate and honour the achievements of ancestors. They were erected in front of tombs, temples, bridges or ancestral halls, or along a road.
160. To Annette Waters
Dear Q I have just been reading ‘Thibet is my Country’ by the brother of the Dalai Lama who escaped1–not the one that stayed and became a Japanese puppet–it is written by a German H. Harrer–who from what I can gather, was a POW in the camp at Dera Dun–and escaped–Taking 2 years to reach Lhasa 2 It is strange–only one week after I was posted to the Bangalore POW camp I was offered a transfer to the Dera Dun camp, but refused as I had just come down from near there and wanted to see something of the South. If I had known there were Germans there I certainly would have gone–it would have been interesting speaking to them, whereas I could say nothing to the Italians–Well, this German met Norbu in Lhasa and they became great friends–Now an exile in Switzerland–with the help of a tape recorder and Harrer–he has written this book–Though he is an abbot of a monastery he says nothing of religion–Considering he is not qualified–having only attained to a 2nd degree–whatever that is–They have [to] pass examinations to reach various degrees–So he speaks mostly of home life–and starts off right away with my old friend barley flour. It is their staff of life–To begin with they roast it–Put a layer of sand in a frying pan and make very hot–then pour in the barley kernels–they turn brown and split to pieces–This he says makes a delicious smell–They tip the grain into a sieve which gets rid of the sand–and eat a part of the grain there and then–The rest is collected in a bag and taken to the miller–where it is ground to flour–called tsampa–and is their staple diet–
At meals they use wooden bowls–in which they make a dough with the flour–and eat it along with soup or butter or cheese–As simple as that–no cooking–
And then they make beer of it–boil up some with water–add some yeast and let stand to ferment–and from the beer they distil vodka–Dear old barley flour here I come
Yrs Ian
P.S. and what is barley sugar?
1 Tibet Is My Country: Autobiography of Thubten Jigme Norbu, Brother of the Dalai Lama as Told to Heinrich Harrer (1960). The eldest brother of the present Dalai Lama went into exile in the United States in 1951, where he became a campaigner for the Tibetan cause.
2 Heinrich Harrer (1912–2006), Austrian-born adventurer best known for Seven Years in Tibet (1952). In 1939 Harrer joined an expedition to the Diamir Face of the Nanga Parbat, the most western of the Himalayan peaks. With the outbreak of war in September 1939 he and his companions were arrested by British military officers and detained first in Ahmednagar and later in Dehra Dun. After several attempts, Harrer and others successfully escaped in April 1944.
161. To Clark Massie
Dear Massey–Thanks for your letter–I shall look forward to seeing you–Though I fear I shall have an empty house when you arrive I mean there will be no paintings–They should with any luck at all–be done and sent off Already long overdue–I do hate having nothing on the walls But always have to send them away as soon as done–
Since seeing you I have been reading–Suzuki’s book about Eckhart and Zen1–It is better than the other book–a lot–but he says himself that all these concepts of then and now, of this and that, of nothingness–are beyond the power of words to express–understanding is of the belly as the Chinese say–and he recommends that–one should read the sages in the Chinese script printed large with wood blocks–Something more than words–also less–A character can be any part of speech–you please–and almost any meaning–you care to read into it–A perfect medium for expressing mystical ideas and driving a poor westerner–nuts–
From the Hong Kong bookshop I got some catalogues–Collets of London seem only to stock dictionaries2–I have one on order but seem as far away as ever from getting an interesting Chinese book–However some irons still in the fire–Please dont bother too much about the books–The library have been doing me better lately–Thibet by the Dalai Lama’s brother–most interesting–
Curious you should speak of time standing still–I had just written the same to my brother–who had sent me an old photo album looking back 55 years–Seemed to me as though it was all yesterday–For him the world has been spinning–a grandfather–a golden wedding a great grandfather–one generation piled on another3–With me, another Chinese character swallowed–another picture born belated–to mark the course of time–Well to hell with time–Suzuki says it does not exist
Heil, Heil, Suzuki–and the moment of truth.
Bye now. Ian Fairweather
1 Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist: The Eastern and Western Way (1957).
2 Collet’s Chinese Bookshop, 40 Great Russell Street, London.
3 Arthur Duprè Fairweather had married Lelia Alice Chapman in 1912. See letter 184, note 2.
162. To Annette Waters
Dear Q. Thank Heaven these paintings are (I think) finished at last–All this pub(licity) has got me so worried I’ve been afraid of producing a flop–I dont mind so much my paintings getting it but I wish they would leave me out of the picture
I hear they are reproducing the ‘Monastery’ soon1–looking forward to see that and will send a copy when it comes out–The Oxford University Press is also making one in colour 2–Be interesting to see what they make of it–probably a horror–I sent you by surface mail the pictures that came out in our local paper.3 The painting on the wall ‘Night life’4 comes out pretty well though it is almost pitch dark in that corner of the hut–wonderful cameras the press people have now–none of the old flash bulbs that used to near blind one He took all the photos with a tiny ultraviolet light you could hardly see–Thank Heaven that lot were friendly–but the T.V. people I didn’t like at all–Asking a lot of damn silly questions taking all the wrong kind of shots–made me turn my back and look the interviewer over my shoulder–while he asked the questions–very suspicious I thought–that way they can put words into my mouth I never said–with my back turned you cant see if I’m talking or not–They can fake those things about any way they want I dont suppose you will ever see it–dont believe a thing–if you do–I hear there is an article in this months ‘Walkabout’ our geographic magazine with photos of Bribie5–ought to be interesting will try and send you a copy–Not much news else–Still suffering from the goanna bite He always tries to bight my toes when I feed him so I wear shoes–but he caught me bare foot6 The ear not much better–There are a lot of English people here suffer from skin troubles it is the dry air–our skin isnt made for it–After much trouble got a new Chinese dictionary from London–the Reds have officially brought out a new writing and all books now are published in the new script but the darn dictionary published in Peking has 20 pages missing from the middle of it–not much of an ad for the new China–The hay box you mention should be just right for cooking rice–I just about live on it now–Will try it–Bye now Yrs Ian
1 Monastery (1961).
2 Bernard Smith, Australian Painting, 1788–1960 (1962).
3 ‘Art Is His Life’, Courier-Mail, 22 March 1962.
4 Night Life (1962).
5 Henry Franca, ‘Bribie Island…Where Flinders Lost His Hat’, Walkabout, April 1962.
6 Robert Hughes accompanied Jon Molvig on a visit to Fairweather where they found him with a badly infected foot following a goanna bite. They took him to hospital in Brisbane. According to Hughes: ‘the foot had swollen up and the toes were black…his survival, the doctors said, was a near-run thing’. Hughes, Things I Didn’t Know: A Memoir (2006).
163. To Treania Smith
Dear Miss Smith
Am packing up and sending to day some paintings–Nine in all–
I forgot to send names for the last two large ones I sent down–
The large black and white that looks like lightning is Monsoon–
The black leaves on a red wall–(2 sheets) is Gekko2–you can hear him but cant see him–
Well that’s it–Be very anxious to hear if they arrive safely.
Sincerely Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Yggdrasil (1961–62). Yggdrasil is an immense tree in Norse cosmology.
2 Gecko (1961–62).
164. To Annette Waters
Bribie Easter [postmarked 26 April 1962]
Dear Q. The bridge is beginning to grow across Pumistone Passage–Some friends came down for the holidays and took me in their car–all around the new housing development–It was a shock–Some miles of new road and some hundreds of new houses have gone up since I was out that way–Unbelievable how quick it is growing–All my old haunts, where there wasn’t a sign of man–swarming with cars, telephone poles–even the beginning of a zoo a large aviary so far alone in a park and the beginnings of a shopping centre So much traffic on the roads that yesterday we had our first accident–a head-on smash–and people taken to hospital That is what is happening to Bribie–Alas. Even in the article in ‘Walkabout’ I am sending you–they speak of my days as numbered and I’ll have to be moving on–Brought it all home with rather a bang–Got to think about where to go–and what it is going to cost only thing I can see for it is to buy a small boat with a motor and find a place up the Passage and build another humpy–Months and months of wasted time–one day a week shopping–no more milk–no papers Only hope–all these people want to get near the sea–The houses are all along the seafront–they may still leave me a little longer–but feeling very blue–what an Easter egg–a bomb–Yrs Ian
165. To Marion Smith
Bribie May 3 [postmarked 1962]
Dear Marion
I was a bit–worried when I wrote to you–but have made some enquiries since, and things are not so bad as I thought–There are possibilities of finding another place here on the island–In any case–there is no immediate hurry–I was a bit scared seeing all these houses going up the bridge building–an aerodrome coming here–all on top of each other–And though my hair isn’t white the prospect of building another humpy–alarms me–as well as being a shocking waste of time–Well it has not come to that yet I may have given you the impression that things were desperate–Please take it with a grain of salt. Glad you liked Thief in the night1 trying to find another book worth reading but hard to find–The Chinese writing over the door you asked about is a Buddhist–sort of lucky charm–they write it on their prayer wheels–Does not mean anything–Sort of abracadabra–it is Om mani padme hum I’m thinking of calling the humpy ommani or omani–Nights turning cold–thankful for your woolie–Salamat Yrs
Yan
1 William Sears, Thief in the Night, or, The Strange Case of the Missing Millennium (1961).
166. To Annette Waters
Dear Q. The flying foxes are still with us–they should have flown north by this time–and the ti trees are in flower–and they should not be flowering till September–This is a mixed up year–I think I told you Massie the chemist was down and took some photos–This is one he took with a delayed action gadget–he was able to slip round and get into the picture–Since I last wrote I have been sawing sawing sawing–A huge old tree fell down, and I have taken two curious knobs off it for the collection of drift wood but the prize piece is an arch–all in one piece.
It is [drawing] high enough to walk through–ironwood and about 1ft thick so weighs far too much for me to move. Will have to hire a man with a truck–If it stays there the bushfires will get it I have offered it to several people to take away–but will have to do it myself. Will make a fine gateway when and if installed1–Good news from the Gallery they seem to like the last lot I sent down. I was very doubtful about them–So dark in my hut and when pulled out into the light gave me a shock but so far so good–
Bye for nowYrs Ian
P.S– Also starting to build an Aerodrome here–alack aday2–
1 Fairweather would position it as an archway or moon-gate entry to his home and name it the ‘Q’, inspired by the shape of the wood and the memory of his sister.
2 Likely a reference to the song ‘I have a song to sing, O’ in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Yeoman of the Guard (1888).
167. To Mary Turner
Dear Mrs Turner–
Thank you for sending on enclosure from Ure Smith–But I cannot give them a blank cheque to reproduce just anything they choose without my seeing it first–I dont know how that is to be done–I have suggested photographs1–Sorry to make difficulties–but I am leery of that savage animal the public.
I have its claw marks–
Glad you liked Xenophobia2–I liked it myself–I dont know why–
Perhaps because I had very little to do with it–it just happened like a piece of drift wood–
Sincerely Yrs
Ian Fairweather
Mary Elizabeth Turner (née Killen, b. 1926). Sydney-born gallerist and benefactor who grew up on a pastoral property near Orange, New South Wales. Educated in Sydney, she later studied with the artists Thea Proctor and Adelaide Perry. Following Lucy Swanton’s retirement from Macquarie Galleries (1956), Killen joined Treania Smith as co-director. In 1958 she married Godfrey Turner. Although she never met Ian Fairweather, she corresponded with him and held him in the highest regard.
_____________
1 Sam Ure Smith was the publisher of Art and Australia. Fairweather later replied to the editor, Mervyn Horton: ‘Too bad too late. Accept my fate’. The inaugural issue (May 1963) would feature Fairweather’s Abstract (1960) on the cover, which was from Mervyn Horton’s personal collection, and include a poem by Laurie Thomas, ‘Ian Fairweather’.
2 Xenophobia (1961–62) was acquired by Mary Turner.
168. To Treania Smith
Dear Miss Smith.
Hetherington has sent me a copy of the Profile he wrote in the Age Supplement A reproduction of a painting of mine ‘Head of a Native Woman’.1 I am writing him to say it is not mine and asking him to trace the artist–and why they have let it ride all this time (since /49 in Melb Gallery) without claiming it–If the artist cant be found I will have to write the Melb Gallery disclaiming it–a lot of trouble–which a photo would have saved–I can only hope that the Ure Smith article will not entail further denials and protestations from me or some other unfortunate artist involved–
I have been worried since you left–You may have hurt your foot on a mangrove–and I feel very guilty–and sorry for taking you on such an ill advised excursion–I was very selfish and I am very sorry–please forgive me
Yrs Sincerely
Ian Fairweather
P.S. The Arc de triomphe is now standing in place of Hetheringtons dry stick2
P.S. Think the Head is an Augustus John or copy3–
1 Head of a Woman (c. 1933) was published with John Hetherington’s profile of Fairweather in the Age (9 June 1962) and captioned: ‘Head of a Native Woman, a gouache by Ian Fairweather, acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1949’. There is no doubt that the signed painting is by Fairweather.
2 Hetherington’s article begins: ‘A dry stick planted in the ground at the road marked the foot track through the scrub…’ The arc Fairweather refers to is likely the salvaged arc-shaped piece of wood he named ‘the Q’.
3 Augustus John (1878–1961), English artist who like Fairweather had studied at the Slade School under Henry Tonks. During Fairweather’s time at the Slade, Tonks had taken him to meet John at his studio in Chelsea.
169. To Annette Waters
Dear Q– These terrible newspaper people–they make me shiver–I suppose Hetherington means well–and I dont suppose anyone will take the trouble to read it–so it doesnt matter–One good result of it has been the enclosed letter from Grant1–So charming and touching I want you to preserve it carefully–Makes one think–a strange world we live in–Who knows her prayer perhaps did help me–
But one bad thing–I told you I was a bit worried about the illustrated article the Sydney publisher Ure Smith is making–and here in this one of Hetheringtons is a picture–‘The head of a native woman’ which I am perfectly certain I never painted–I wish I had–I am writing to try and get things straightened out–
Enclose cutting of Gerald Durrell who is near here2–would much like to have met him–David Fleah’s Fauna Reserve is a place I must see one day, so near here, but always tied up3
You will be glad to hear I have gone a bust and bought a fine pair of boots–The hospital say I must bring a dressing gown–so also got a fire blanket; am making it into a poncho to replace the old knitted one, now in holes–
So, almost respectable–Another T.V. visit to boost the island expected here–One, photo of self and hut–
in haste regards Yrs Ian
P.S. Looking at the head again I am pretty sure it is an Augustus John or a copy–
1 The undated letter to Fairweather from N. Grant in Canterbury, Victoria, prompted by Hetherington’s profile of Fairweather, recounted Grant’s six-year-old daughter’s reaction to radio reports of Fairweather being lost at sea in 1952: ‘She suddenly burst into tears & said she did not want the ‘“raft man” to die!’ She then prayed for him: ‘This she did–most fervently with tears’. Grant concluded: ‘I wish you could have seen the joy on her face when weeks later, she ran in to tell us that she had just heard on the wireless that the “raft man” had been found safe and sound & her prayers had been answered!’
2 Gerald Durrell had recently travelled to Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand shooting the BBC Nature series Two in the Bush.
3 The David Fleay Wildlife Park is located at Burleigh Heads, a suburb of the Gold Coast in Queensland.
170. To Lina Bryans
Bribie Island–Queensland–June 23 [1962]
Dear Mrs Bryans–
George Bell has written me that you are very ill–I am so sorry to hear it1–
I had written him about the ‘Head of Native Woman’ a photo of which was in an article in the Age attributed to me–and of which I have no memory at all–He says that he remembers it quite well. It was bought by a pupil of his Dr Clive Stephen2 in 1934–But I am still doubtful–G. B. is 84 and admits his memory is a bit shakey these days–I am not willing to admit that mine is–not all that much it isn’t
And well, I just dont remember it–Can you tell me–am I slipping? do you remember it? The article brought me some letters from people I dont know and among them two religious books from a wellwisher–unnamed–I can think of no one in M[elbourne] who would wish me well except possibly yourself–or do you hate my guts–I never know–but I do want you to know that I do and always will wish you well
Yrs sincerely.
Ian Fairweather.
1 Bryans had badly fractured her right ankle in 1961 and an extended period of ill health followed.
2 Clive Travers Stephen (1889–1957), Melbourne-born medical practitioner, modernist sculptor and printmaker.
171. To Annette Waters
Bribie. June 24. [postmarked 1962]
Dear Q. It’s a strange world–I wrote down to a friend in Melbourne about that head of native woman to find out if he could remember seeing it around before it got into the Gallery–He writes back it is certainly mine–and was sold to a friend of his back in 1934. It was one of those I brought with me when I first arrived in M[elbourne] and hawked around for £1 and £2 a piece–He is 84 and admits his memory is getting dim but beginning to think perhaps it is mine after all–I have a dim recollection of some paintings I framed and had on my walls in Shanghai–it may be one of those–
I left one large portrait of a mother and child in a moulded frame I had made myself. the frame was never guilded–and the portrait left as a drawing more or less without colour I liked it better that way–I also left a large statue cast in cement and covered with a shiny coat of pitch–It was cast in a glue and gelatine mould–which broke in the process and flooded the floor with glue–my poor boy had a bad time cleaning it up and said reproachfully he hoped I would not make any more statues–Thirty odd years–and such a bucketing–one could forget I suppose–Anyway letting it ride now with a ?–The TV people have been down again given me another going over–This time a much better interview–will be on the air Thurs night–Pity you cant see it. They took photos of everything even the bull ant hill near my door–I shant see it either–I should find it too embarrassing sitting in some alien family circle looking at myself doing a strip tease–Perhaps it will get on to a cinema news reel sometime and then you may see it–on the same day we had a fire–family away–house burnt out–looks like we have a firebug on the island–Lot of excitement for one day in B.
Bye now All the best
Yrs Ian
172. To Annette Waters
Dear Q. I have just finished the first civilised meal of my own cooking–and except that I have got the hiccups–I’m feeling fine–when I think of all the wretched butcher shops where I have had to wait in Qs–The worst ever was in Darwin–The back of the shop was a forest of carcases hanging by the leg upside down attacked by several butchers with knives and axes–Behind the counter were large tubs filled with meat slices–Before the counter were a black and white crowd of housewives–four deep–waiting for some of the slices to be thrown at them–for in D. meat was the cheapest food–Vegetables, which had to come overland or round by sea–were too high in price and too bruised and battered for anyone to buy–I used to walk miles to a little shop outside the town–where there was less of a crowd and where I could get a whole bullocks heart for nine pence–sometimes if I was lucky–I dont think now I will ever go into a butchers shop again–D.V.1 My civilised meal is fried rice–or Nasi Goring as it is known all over the islands–How many memories–eating it in booths, under awnings–on rafts on the Mekong and on the Pei Hai in Peking among the lotuses–What suggested it was Holbrooks Rice à Riso they sell here–a mixture of white and yellow long grain rice with a packet of seasoning They tell you to fry the rice first in oil or butter–till brown–Then boil it–adding what you will, Chopped Veg–fish–anchovy paste–and where you are you can have chopped limpets cuttle fish–salted shrimps etc etc–How I envy you your sea flavours–But even I can make a tolerable dish–and I can see no end to possible variations–You need only a deep fry pan and a small spirit stove–
I hear the TV show will probably travel round Australia–I am wondering–do you have a TV station in Jersey–and if so could you not ask them to put it on for you–would have some local interest–And I could be present at the family reunion–if not in person but televised–and say howdo to you all–As I am wearing your beautiful sweater–and boots (though I think they do not appear on the screen) you need have no misgivings about my appearance–it is entirely respectable–à vous Ian
1 Deo volente, God willing.
173. To Clark Massie
Dear Massie– Time is slipping away–I am trying to rush a batch of painting through before going to hospital1 and of course at this critical moment the sky is overcast and the hut is so dark I can hardly see what I am doing–Too bad–I will have to let them go unseen more or less–They might have been–perhaps they really are a step ahead for me up the long trail up the mountain–I heard that Thomas was thinking of buying a large Epiphany for the Gallery here–I wrote him to try and see these ones first but it was too late, alas 2–The trustees had decided to buy it–So it will be here and I am afraid I wont be very proud of it–I am writing now to ask you about typewriting possibilities Hetherington–peeved I think because I repudiated his ‘Head’, has returned my Chinese translations3–I am not discouraged–and want to get them typed–I wrote–Duplications in B[risbane]–Their prices are very high–about £7 for 2000 words–standard price in England. 2/6 per 1000–Do you know some other place I might visit and have a talk over things–Sending them to my sister in England–hopeless business–we are all I fear–getting very old–Another result of the ‘Head’ episode–I have decided, come what may, to get a camera with flash light–The chemist here has a Brownie Kodak with flash about £5–Think I will get it unless you can suggest a better–must have a record of paintings to avoid further mistakes–But what tipped the scale were some tree tops against the sky at sunset, coming home along the waterfront the other evening–I fell in love–In my painting I have almost said goodbye to colour–There are people whose dreams are coloured–but when I recall mine there is never any colour–can you honestly say that you remember colours of a dream–I dream often of a strange town but which I seem to know my way about–fascinating place but no colour–
The Library here have done me proud this time–sent The Dream of the Red Chamber–most famous Chinese long story–will take it to hospital to read–The translation is from the German4–Waley passed it up as too difficult–Have you read his Genji Monogatari the Japanese ‘Red Chamber’–tale of a lost world5–I always feel one must not think of the Chinese as adult in a western sense–the world of fairy tales is theirs–one must be young again–content to listen to a song bird in a hooded cage–and not yearn for symphonies–They have always valued the spontaneous–the element of chance (hence their gambling) above all that is calculated Where we go miles apart––but we are learning–
I see they are taking old neglected Pissaro out of the cellar again6–am interested because I feel I am swinging that way–nice to feel one is in the fashion–without intending to be–the tide–the mysterious tide–In Picasso’s dictum, [world] substitut[es] experimental for creative–The song of the bird–Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Earlier Fairweather had advised Massie that he had been to hospital in Brisbane about a tick bite but was told that a skin cancer on his ear required an operation.
2 Earlier Fairweather wrote to Laurie Thomas: ‘This being in a sense my home town–I should not like to be represented here by something I don’t like…I have two paintings here that I would not be ashamed to see in the Gallery–I am wondering if you would care to come and see them before deciding–They are smaller but better’.
3 In June 1962 John Hetherington had sent Fairweather’s stories to James McAuley, the editor of Quadrant, who had agreed to read them.
4 The Dream of the Red Chamber, also known as The Story of the Stone, a famous epic novel of the eighteenth century by Cao Xueqin. The 1932 German translation by Franz Kuhn was the basis of an abridged version, The Dream of the Red Chamber, by Florence and Isabel McHugh, published in 1958.
5 Genji Monogatari, known as The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in the eleventh century, translated by Arthur Waley and published in 1925.
6 Lucien Pissarro’s Teatime, Coldharbour (1916) was acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery in 1959. It had been displayed in the vestibule of the Courier-Mail building in Brisbane in January 1962 and may have been rehung in the gallery thereafter.
174. To Annette Waters
Bribie. Aug 16 [postmarked 1962]
Dear Q. Last night before going to get the new ear–only hope the old hut will still be here when I come back–school holiday just now and the place swarming with small boys with not even a lock on the door–The paintings were not finished in time–to send off–so have had to leave those too in a box–Spent the last moments making a few camera shots–of trees and some of our beach fauna–If any successful will send some–The show is now on in Sydney–The National Gallery in Canberra has bought a large one ‘Shalimar’ which is good news and the Brisbane Gallery has bought another large one ‘Epiphany’–but that is not such good news–I dont like it–and wish they had taken another–Things are moving terribly fast here–Amazed at the quality of work being done now–have to work very hard to keep up with the times
Give old Nev my regards–wish he could come round this way on his way back Think he would like Australia–He should like your dish of ormers1–remind him of the great Vancouver dish–clam chowder–How much I used to enjoy that–Have just got two Autographed books from Frank Clune2 The kindness of so many people here–I have never met–we aren’t like that at home
Thank goodness I still have one of your woolen vests which I havent used yet and so is clean and can wear to hospital–and I still have one pyjama suit unused–but I hear they provide pyjamas so wont have to take it–The blanket poncho I had made will do as a dressing gown–Everyone now has these zipper bags–they all carry around little transistor radios–and behind their cars on a trailer they all have a fiber glass boat, some have it on the roof of the car–no one is quite properly dressed without some of these things nowadays–Oh well I shall tote a bundle–I havent progressed beyond the old swaggie days–good old ‘Waltzing Matilda’3–there is still a place for her down under–All the best and regards to all Yrs Ian–
1 ‘Oreille de la mer’, ear of the sea, or abalone, is a Jersey speciality.
2 Francis Patrick (Frank) Clune (1893–1971), popular Australian author, travel writer and historian.
3 Slang for travelling on foot with one’s belongings in a ‘Matilda’ or swag slung over one’s back; also the title of Australia’s best known bush ballad.
175. To Treania Smith
Dear Miss Smith– A line to say I am back in Bribie and to thank you for all the nice things you sent me in hospital–Margaret Olley came several times–in fact I felt like a public nuisance–I dont know how the papers got to know I was going to hospital at all1–but it brought a stream of all sorts of people–every day–for 3 weeks and 3 days–and I dont know how much longer they would have kept me–on Saturday I walked out–Bad luck the bus to Bribie full–crossed by boat Sunday but chemist on Bribie away–At last got ear dressed on Monday–Hope be all right–was taking a risk–but had to be done–From all surgeons and newspaper writers–from now on–no more–it was only a small spot on the ear and now they have given me an ear like a bloated toadstool–they might at least have tried a few milder remedies first–but I think these surgeons and writers–they get to thinking of people in bits and pieces–
Made a great fuss about the lungs again–threatened to put tube down my nose if I couldnt spit them up some bacilli–Terrible people–Pile of mail awaiting attention So in haste to say many thanks–and hope soon back on the job
Sincerely Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 ‘Artist In Hospital’ and ‘Artist Still In Hospital’, Bribie Star, 24 August and 7 September 1962. ‘Art Goes Up…’, Courier-Mail, 6 September 1962, reported on the acquisition of Epiphany by the Queensland Art Gallery and stated that Fairweather was ‘in Princess Alexandra Hospital’ with an ear infection.
176. To Margaret Olley
Dear Miss Olley– The doctor came round on Sat morning and said ‘it is going to heal up all right’ he didnt say I might go, but I took that as good enough–so went without further ado–Three weeks lying in bed was making me ill in any case–The bus was full on Saturday and on Sunday the Bribie chemist was away So at last on Monday got it dressed–and today had a look at it in the mirror–it has all done not one bit of good–the infection is there the same as ever–Very fed up–will know better what to do when see Bribie doctor–but pray to goodness I dont have to return–Looks fine downstairs–curtains flowers–nurses–but upstairs–dim lights–bare walls–like the inside of a prison–the doctor wheels you down a long passage and into a dark cell–no nurses no light bulbs–Just the doctor the knife and one assistant–and you pass out–like a light grim–glad to be out and glad to find the old grass hut still here unchanged–Am returning with much thanks, herewith, the books you so kindly lent me–and would like to thank you again for all the nice things you brought and apologise for making myself such a nuisance.
Sincerely Yrs
Ian Fairweather
Margaret Hannah Olley (1923–2011). Queensland-born artist and benefactor who enjoyed friendships with many Australian artists. Drawn to Fairweather’s castaway style of living, Olley visited Bribie Island on numerous occasions in the 1960s, often in the company of other artists. Over the years she offered Fairweather much practical support. She also exhibited at Macquarie Galleries. Her friendship with him is commemorated in Fairweather’s painting MO, PB and the Ti Tree (1965).
177. To Mary Turner
Dear Mrs Turner–
They forwarded from the hospital the press notices you sent and many thanks1 If only the press had not got to know I was going there it wouldn’t have been so bad–almost enjoyable–So many kind people–but so many–However relaxing now in Bribie and glad to say the ear is getting better after all–though a bit out of shape–Most interested to hear that you met Cecil Taylor2–and that after so many years he should still remember me–I am wondering if he has kept in touch with any of the Peking community of those days Think I must write him, be interesting to hear news from a vanished world–Dont venture to comment on the show–
Surpasses all understanding3–
Sincerely Yrs–
Ian Fairweather
1 The Macquarie Galleries exhibition of 15–27 August 1962 was a high point in the artist’s career. Glowing reviews abounded: James Gleeson, ‘The Works of A Master’, Sun (15 August); ‘Fairweather Now Seen as Our Greatest Painter’, Sydney Morning Herald (15 August); Jim Hall, ‘“Genius. The Word Is Not Too Strong”: The Hermit Painter Hits the Jackpot’, Sun-Herald (19 August).
2 A. Cecil Taylor, Sydney-born journalist who worked at the Hankow Herald and as news editor at the Leader, Peking, 1930–32, and the Peiping Chronicle until its forced closure by Japanese occupation forces in 1937.
3 A biblical reference: ‘And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding’, Philippians 4:7.
178. To Annette Waters
Dear Q I am terribly sad–the Winston family the oldest inhabitants of Bribie are pulling out1 It was they who gave me my first shelter when I sailed over in my ships boat–I found an abandoned shack on an old bee farm and they let me live there–It was the loveliest place–miles from anywhere–and so thick with roos, if I went out with a lantern at night I had to walk round them and some of the old bucks used to stand on their hind legs and growl at me–All along they have been my good friends–the Winstons and the roos too–They own the old store–which used to be our only Store–with benches outside where I used to sit and drink my daily bottle of milk–a friendly old wooden building–It was the old grandmother I told you about who shook my hand on my birthday2–The most charming kindly old woman I have ever met–I cant imagine her saying an ill word about anyone–Just meeting her and saying good day–and seeing her welcome smile was enough to carry one on for another day
Bribie will never be the same now–
I’m sad–sad. Yrs Ian
1 Arthur Winston and his brother Eddie purchased the Bestmann shop, a general store on the corner of Toorbul Street and First Avenue, in 1933.
2 Likely Arthur Winston’s mother-in-law, Elizabeth Cahill, who worked in the shop and was known as Gran.
179. To Treania Smith
Dear Miss Smith– Thank you for letter and cheque–Yes–things are a little better–The ear seems to have healed up–and is now only a bit out of shape I met Miss Swanton–and was able to show her the cowshed here that I hope to rent and turn into a studio A beautiful place–only thing against it is it is in a low swampy place that gets flooded in the rainy season–and the mosquitoes can be very bad there–It has no walls and I have thought of making movable screens like a Japanese house–Instead of the transparent paper–I plan to use plastic sheets–supported by wire netting–and white washed–to make a translucent wall–Should make a delightful diffused light–quite keen on the idea–The owner has died and the land–and shed have reverted to the State–Have written to obtain a lease–awaiting reply–Even if I did not live there (at least in the mosquito season–) it would remove the reproach that I am living rent free–whereas campers have to pay £1 a week–So very anxious to get one foot on the ground and be respectable. Work proceeding very slowly but hopefully–I am thankful to say–Sincerely Yrs
Ian Fairweather
180. To Laurence Thomas
Dear Laurie Thomas–
Luxuriating in the warmth–
These cold nights under piles of dirty garments which give no heat–a misery–
About Epiphany–it is painted entirely with these so called plastic paints–some kind of synthetic resin–
I noted that many of the Australian works shown at the Whitechapel Gallery were said to be painted with Vinyl acetate–presumably that is the same thing–
Yes, quite O.K. by me if they wish to reproduce Epiphany–
If you wish me to return the copy of your prose poem–let me know–Otherwise I should like to keep it1–
My clodhopping works–take flight–in it with silver wings–Sincerely
Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Laurie Thomas, ‘Ian Fairweather’, published in Art & Australia (May 1963).
181. To Marion Smith
Dear Marion–The long expected bushfire has come and burnt all round–but the hut, am thankful to say–survived–It was a gentle fire this time with no wind behind it so there was time to start backfires–The archway in one piece was saved–though a bit burnt in places–
The enclosed space talks were sent me by a rather remarkable woman Mrs Henderson of Sydney [arrow with her name in margin] who began writing me in hospital–60, a grandmother–but restless–I told her I liked Science Fiction–She also sent me some remedies for the ear (quite healed up now–I think) Crab apple ointment? etc etc from a Dr Bach–Pacific Highway Slacks Creek she much believes in1–And the cutting about Erickson–which has certainly given me itchy feet–About Johnny Hill–he is short and broad and very strong–I knew him in Cairns. Sad story–his father pioneered Glen Boughton. 2 They had Kanaka labour in those days–and he built a causeway across the mud flats The White Australia policy closed him down but he was so much in love with Glen Boughton that he could not leave it–Without labour it got overgrown, in guava and lantana–When I got to know it was a jungle–the cowsheds (I lived in one of them) Sawmill–houses–all in ruins–Johnny and his old mother (a cripple, he carried her about) lived in a tumbledown shack–The father was buried on the hillside The cows gone bush–J had been brought up with the blacks–had still one horse which he rode down across the mudflats and then by boat to Cairns to get supplies–He used to pass my cowshed–So we got acquainted–He now works [in a] margerine factory–South B[risbane]–doing well–Thanks for looking up New Caledonia–will keep it in mind but Erickson–with mention of coral and shells attracts me up there–I do love collecting shells–in clear water–they all look like gems–Some hope perhaps of getting an old cowshed here–reverted to the state–now on Crown land–Have written Lands Office but no reply– [arrow with text in margin] (yes a reply yesterday–my request gone through–So hope–Fine roof–tank and concrete floor–plan to put transparent (lucent) plastic screen around for walls–lovely soft light Oh well–must hope–A lot of work and worry–Weavers drop in occasionally3 So the world rolls on–but always unwashed–Must really go some where where is water–Happy Christmas in case I don’t write before then
Yrs ever Ian
P S. I’m sick of the Times Literary Supplement–want to switch to some other mag with more interesting info re books etc–Used to take Atlantic Monthly–can you suggest Also want to know where can get The S.F. Mag. Galaxy (American) or Astounding or Mysteries and S F–4
1 Plant-based homeopathic remedies developed by Dr Edward Bach, who had trained at University College Hospital London. Crab Apple is known as a cleansing remedy.
2 East of Cairns, where Fairweather lived in 1947.
3 Gil and Cathy Weaver and their children Shane and Rebecca. Gil had served in the army and worked as a carpenter at Coronation Hill mining survey before taking up painting.
4 Galaxy Science Fiction was a leading science-fiction magazine published from 1950 to 1980; Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction was first published in 1949.
182. To Clark Massie
Dear Massie So glad to get your good news–You’re a lucky man Congratulations–You would have to be a bachelor of longstanding to realize how lucky you are–Hope you wont let paternity go to your head–too much1–The Weavers have been here and just left on account of baby no 3 on the way–I cant say I am sorry they have gone–though very nice and friendly. I found it a trial to have them dropping in daily to look at my paintings which were completely–and I think in consequence–stuck in the mud–They have gone much better since there have been no interruptions–They brought Roy Churcher over and he said he was going to bring some P.V.A (poly vinyl. acetate?) which he says he can get wholesale? 2 Somehow much cheaper than I can get it here–His price 15/- a half gallon–Price here 48/- which is ruinous–But to date he has not arrived–I was thinking that perhaps you would know as well as anyone if it were possible to get some–at a reasonable price–I use a lot of it–It would be a big saving–And thank you very much for the magazines–I would be tempted to subscribe to Meanjin (Christesen makes it almost a patriotic duty) but have just paid my sub–to Atlantic Monthly–and Galaxy–the SF mag–and am too poor to venture further–
Of course just when I am more tied up with painting and not a moment to spare–the library have sent me an absorbing book Inge’s Plotinus3–I have only read a doz pages but feel I know more about what mysticism is already than after all of Suzuki and Eckart–A person I can understand?–and a Durrenmatt novel in German4–Too bad, my German has got so rusty I miss half the fun–Still–would be a great occasion if only there was time to spare. By the same post as your letter–4 large tomes from Frank Clune–again all inscribed to his good friend etc etc–all unreadable–What can one do with a man like that–And a tantalizing offer of an island near Dunk Is–free of rent–has a house on it and all–But 2½ miles off shore–16 miles by road from Tully–If I didn’t have to paint If I had a motor boat etc etc–My attempt to lease the cow shed, behind school has failed–Will have to try and lease a bit round the house and they can build a shed. Will I be seeing you around Xmas–? Anyway wish you well and a happy New Year
Yrs Ian Fairweather
PS– Wrong again–Inge gets lost in long words and–Clunes books (not his but those he sent) quite interesting Still reading over and over Raymond Chandler and getting a kick out of him–
1 Clark and Valmai Massie’s second child, Bronwyn, had been born 2 December 1962.
2 Roy Churcher (1933–2014), English-born painter who trained at the Sutton School of Art and the Slade School in London, had married Brisbane-born artist Betty Churcher (née Cameron, 1931–2015) in 1955 and returned with her to Australia in 1957.
3 William Inge, English priest and writer whose The Religious Philosophy of Plotinus and some Modern Philosophies of Religion (1914) was widely admired.
4 Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss author and dramatist.
183. To Valerie Albiston
Bribie Dec. 10. [postmarked 1962]
Dear Mrs Albiston–
I must admit your generous offer of an island refuge–is very tempting indeed–If only painting were not so much of an entanglement–and moving house not so much of a problem–I have been so long here that I have grown into my humpy like a snail into its shell–However I am only squatting here–housing developments may soon displace me–Till then I havent the energy to move–but I would like to keep it in mind–in case–and thanks
Yrs Sincerely
Ian Fairweather
and my best wishes for Christmas and the New Year
Valerie Albiston (née Cohen, 1911–2008). Melbourne-born modernist painter who trained in the National Gallery School under W. B. McInnes and later at the George Bell School, where she first became aware of the work of Ian Fairweather. From 1938 until the late 1970s Albiston and her sister Yvonne Cohen divided their time between Timana, an island off the Queensland coast, and their home in Melbourne.
184. To Annette Waters
And it has been quite a day–The weather has been bad all through December–and getting worse till last night it became a cyclone. Trees were crashing all around the hut–and I could feel the whole hut shaking–There wasn’t much sleep and in the morning still blowing and raining and the place strewn with wreckage–Yet this is New Years day and willy nilly–wet or fine I feel I must visit the old Red Dragon I have never had a bad day for it before I hope its not an ill omen–I have been so tied up with painting this year–I couldn’t spare the time to clear the road in advance just had to chance it–Well it was awful–every step a fallen branch or tree across the track–could hardly recognise where the track went–but arrived at last–and this year took the camera along to take my red friend1–But the sky was dark with heavy rain and the Dragon is in deep shade at the best of times–So little hope of it turning out–Well I got back and only got bushed once. Fortunately I had left a bottle of orange pop along the track expecting the usual Christmas heat–and it showed up like a beacon amongst all the wet green–otherwise I was for the moment quite lost I left it there for some other day–for this year I was wading nearly all the way through beautiful fresh water–and felt no need of a drink–Thankful to say my old friend is still there and no sign of encroachment–Soon after getting back a young couple and family–of 4–between about 6 and 1–They had written to say their daughter was intensely interested in art and could they come and look see–6 years–and interested in art–Well well–Due to dine with them tomorrow–Will try and get picture of the youngster in it–She is nice–
Thanks for photo of Arthur and group 2–How very like Jim he has become3–Nev I dont think I could recognise–Audrey is the most surprising–I remember her rather a dowdy tomboy–Helga writes–Tricia twin sons–What a year of surprises it has been–Poor old Ben looks very sad in her photo–but it is nice to have it–
Well, I must admit, feeling a little done in after the long walk–but happy I didn’t miss out–Happy New Year–
Yrs Ian
1 In an earlier letter to his sister Fairweather had enclosed photographs taken with his Starlet Kodak camera.
2 Likely a photograph of a family gathering marking the christening of Arthur and Lelia Fairweather’s great-grandson Brent, with daughter Audrey and granddaughter Susan, and Ian Fairweather’s siblings Neville, Ethel and Annette. Robert Walker Collection, National Art Archive, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
3 Fairweather’s brother James.
185. To Talbot H. Waterman
Bribie Is– [postmarked 20 January 1963]
Dear Mr Talbot Waterman–
Your letter arrived as I was packing or rather preparing to pack–everything done to date and send it to the Macquarie Gallery 19 Bligh St Sydney–So that is where all my paintings are or will be shortly, I hope–Before that has been a long arid period–and there are very few paintings I regret to state–but have written Miss. T. Smith of the Gallery–to afford you all facilities of choice should you visit Sydney–
I should like you to have one of my paintings I should have been a zoologist myself–but fate ruled otherwise–
Sincerely Yrs Ian Fairweather
Talbot H. Waterman (1914–2010). American-born and Harvard-educated zoologist who had a distinguished career at Yale. With his partner Joe Gifford he travelled widely, including to Australia. After writing to Fairweather from the Australian National University in Canberra, he visited Macquarie Galleries and purchased the painting Guy Fawkes (1963).
186. To Annette Waters
Dear Q. Went [on] a drive with some friends–today to see some of the new developments–7000 new building lots to be opened [written in upper margin with arrow]–Unmade road through the sand–A switchback Fortunately it had rained so the sand gripped when it is dry cars bog down–We were lucky–Saw the new water installation–Very mysterious–no water to be seen–only little concrete pill boxes here and there You go near them and hear a buzzing inside–automatic electric pumps–collect the water that is beneath the sand and send it to the water towers–I had expected a big pumping station a reservoir–but not a thing to be seen not even the electric wires–all underground and all automatic–The engineer goes out fishing!–And fishing–Every car that comes down here has a fibreglass boat with outboard motor in tow–A £1000 job–Where does all the money come from–they all seem to get it somewhere, as mysterious as the automatic water pumps–And they go fishing–
Well, my friend who is a chemist has done me a great service–he has got for me whole sale a gallon of p.v.a. (poly vinyl acetate) for painting I have been paying over £5 a gallon for it and it nearly ruined me–He gets it for 30/-! So I’m feeling rich–Like everyone now he has a projector–we had a session the other night–Hangs up a screen about a yard square Switch on the projector and he shows colour slides–as good as you see in a movie–What surprised me–some of those dull shots he took of me–(I sent you one–) when thrown on the screen in colour–come to life–I am going to hang on to these–snapshots here–some are good even in black & white they will really be quite exciting thrown on the screen–(if and when) Too sad–to think I had a Leica camera in Shanghai with projector and all the works–(went broke and had to sell it) it had a cunning viewfinder–it looked round the corner–So you could pretend to be taking a shot in one direction but actually you were taking one at right angles–I had some wonderful days wandering round the markets and villages round S’hai–Had some grand shots of babies and beggars–canals, bridges, junks–alas all gone now–Everyone now goes to Hong Kong–buys Japanese cameras etc comes back and shows movies of their travels. And that way you can do it quite cheap–
Have a faint hope of getting a better Chinese book to translate–The Director of the Melbourne Gallery having heard somehow I was interested in Chinese1–gave me the address of a Sinolog in New York–who had met an Australian artist–who had–Well anyway he is willing to advise–Frequently visits the East–I gather a kind of Lafcadio Hearn–(The guy that started me off learning the characters)2 Well I hope!–Everything has been so dull lately I have been getting bogged down–losing interest Books too have been dull–go to sleep over them–Read a rave somewhere about the ‘Naked and the Dead’3–If you want to read a lot of four letter words–you will find plenty there–but not much else–However, an old tattered copy of Erick Maria Remarques ‘The blak Obolisk’ very very funny4–can recommend it if you want a laugh–Asked the library for the Gunter Grass [written in margin] ‘Tin Drum’5–a lot of talk about it–but alas they have sent it in German–a huge book and its in dialect–not a chance to finish it in the month they allow–Some French tales and some tales of Pasternak (Doctor Zivago)6 All this all of a sudden–If they would spread it over several months–But of course just now up to the eyelids in painting no time to more than glance at them–hail and farewell–and I have waited for them for months–Boogie Woogie–
Yrs Ian
P.S. The photo is one the Courier Mail took
PP.S Don’t send the overcoat–Can get everything here now big shops
1 Gordon Thomson, Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, had written to Fairweather on 22 February 1963 introducing him to Mr I. Groupp of 144 Stanton Street, New York, who had a ‘deep personal interest in calligraphy, but also knows the literature very well and, since he visits the Far East regularly, has access to a number of old Chinese books’. The information was conveyed to Thomson by the Melbourne-based painter Robert Grieve, who had recently met Mr Groupp in Japan.
2 Lafcadio Hearn, Greek-born writer best known for his books about Japan, where he lived from 1890 until his death.
3 Novel by American writer Norman Mailer published in 1948.
4 Erich Maria Remarque, Der schwarze Obelisk (1956) appeared in English translation as The Black Obelisk (1957).
5 Günter Grass, The Tin Drum (1959).
6 Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (1957) was published in English translation in 1958, the year in which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
187. To Clark Massie
Dear Massie Thanks for return of Chiaroscuro1–and the book notes–I am in such a depression I can hardly write–Got into some kind of fix and cant break out of it–Seriously thinking I had better pull right out–Go up to Cairns or somewhere and make a new start–Three quarters of the P V A is gone already and to no purpose at all–Particularly when I wanted something for this Sao Paulo show 2–I am in the depths–Can you send me another gallon–but this time a tin can–as it will travel better by carrier–address it to c of The Four Square store3–If it is at all a trouble to get it–then dont–but I would be obliged–if you can–Let me know if your poem is published would like to read it–Really little taste just now for anything but murders–or far out science fiction–fairy stories–and all my correspondence I have let slide and refuse to see any visitors–Enclose two snaps of our trip to Skirmish Pt–Are you planing to return to Bribie again
Hoping to see you and all is well–
regards. Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Likely Augustus John’s Chiaroscuro: Fragments of Autobiography (1952).
2 The VII Bienal de São Paulo (September–December 1963). Shalimar (1961–62), Portrait of the Artist (1961–62), Jetty (1962) and Night Life (1962) were included in the Australian component of the exhibition.
3 The general store on the corner of First Avenue and Toorbul Street, previously owned and run by the Winston family.
188. To Marion Smith
Dear Marion–I am ashamed to say I have not read Subud1–Have been so tied up with painting everything has had to slide I was in some kind of a rut and could not break out of it–For months I have been going in circles–getting nowhere–If I send this letter off–I will have sent off some paintings at last–and feel for a moment perhaps the evil spell is broken–I have had some visitors sitting on my doorstep–sketching the old hut–Their presence there hasn’t helped things
If Subud wasn’t an Indonesian–I’d be willing to give him a try–and if he was not a disciple of Gourdjief 2–I got a bellyfull of G–reading Ouspenski3–and a bellyfull of the Indonesians when they held me a prisoner–So I’m predjudiced–Adamski and his flying saucers–I also have to pass up4–But I do find some delightful things sometimes in these science fiction tales–Let me know if you like them (and if you find time to read) I’ll send some–You did not say you had got The Heart is a Lonely Hunter5–I liked it a lot–Bye for now Yrs Yan
1 Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo founded an international spiritual movement in Indonesia in the 1920s.
2 George Gurdjieff, Armenian-born spiritual teacher who taught that most humans live their lives in a state of hypnotic ‘waking sleep’ but that it is possible to transcend to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential.
3 Pyotr Ouspenskii, a Russian esotericist who became for a time a follower and powerful advocate of Gurdjieff.
4 George Adamski, Polish-born American author of Flying Saucers Farewell (1961).
5 Carson McCullers’ first novel, published in 1940 when she was twenty-three.
189. To Clark Massie
Dear Massee
Returning here with Penguin list with a few marked–Hope this wont trouble you–And many thanks for the negatives–Cant agree with you about Mexican religion–human sacrifice cutting out the living heart–How can you get around that!–That they are Mongol and came from Asia is shown in their art The old Han bronzes–are close kin and the Maories1–But whence come those astonishing figures on Easter Island 2–They seem to have no relationship to any other art–Since you were here met a strange old character living just behind you–name of Lee3–you should meet him sometime real old Salt–and he paints–boats, of course–but all his colour he reserves for the floor and the walls of his house–a riot–and the rest of him so ship shape I felt I should take my shoes off at the door Since you left also alas the Peking gate gone into tail spin–Tried alterations–but now a mess–always the way–but must go through the mess–the way it is ‘comes out of darkness, morn’.4
So long regards Yrs
Ian Fairweather
P.S. Chandler for choice5
1 Many bronze ritual vessels created during the Shang dynasty c. 1600–1050 BCE feature a zoomorphic mask motif known as taotie, prompting scholars to consider links between early Chinese and Mesoamerican art, notably that of the Olmec.
2 The monolithic human figures called moai carved in stone by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island between 1250 and 1500.
3 Albert Lee, whose oil paintings were displayed at Joe Di Betta’s Jetty Café. See Bribie Star, 17 January 1964.
4 A line from Swinburne’s ‘The Garden of Proserpine’.
5 Raymond Chandler (1888–1959), American master of crime fiction. Fairweather mentions reading him ‘over and over’ at the end of letter 182.
190. To Annette Waters
Dear Q A night off–After such a day one really cannot do any work–The Autumn here makes me glad to be alive–And for once–thank goodness–I am not in despair over painting–People seem to regard it as a light amusement–I have never done anything without tearing my hair and plumbing the depths of misery–But not today–And I have met some strange characters One dear old salt like Capt Cuttle in Dombey and Son1 (over whom I wept–so long ago) He has been to every port in the world and calls his house Buenos Ayeres–He asked me to come see his paintings–Ships–all ships of course and his house is so ship shape and Bristol fashion. 2 I felt I should be taking my shoes off before going into it–So spick and span–All by himself–His ships are grey his walls bare polished wood–but outside he has painted everything paintable–the walls the footpath etc–in violent colours–even silver on the floor–I guess he just needed something really extravagant–his way of going on a bender–The other character I call Diogenes3 I have known him for a long time4–It was he took the photo I sent you of me in my home-knitted poncho–But till a few days ago I had never been on his boat–It is about the size of Arthur’s Clarissa5–and he has lived on it now for fifteen years–when you get inside you can only sit doubled up–the roof is so low–but he has electric light a fan a lathe etc etc all run off the engine–A library–the whole of Kipling if you please and a radio of course–He has bought or leased a small island in the passage here and is slowly building a house–but he has been so long afloat I doubt if he will ever take kindly to the land again–An Englishman from Norwood London–He showed me some photos of the bush in the S.W. corner of Australia–the place where the Kauri pine grows–one of the largest trees in the world–Just that little corner and all around desert–in a way the richest corner of Australia–He is getting bald and his hair is white, what is left of it though he is 9 years younger than me and he wears it in wings like Ben Gurion6 I’m painting his portrait doubled up in his tub–I hope–if I finish it–Should be interesting
Paintings arrived safely in Sydney–but dont know yet what they think of them–Not too sure what I think myself. Bye now all the best
Yrs Ian
1 Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (1848).
2 An old English saying. Before the construction of a floating harbour Bristol had a high tidal range. Ships moored in this area would be aground at low tide, with keels falling to one side. If everything was not properly stowed, the results were chaotic.
3 Diogenes of Sinope, a Greek philosopher who famously lived in a tub or ‘jar’, having no need for conventional shelter.
4 The subject of Fairweather’s painting Diogenes (1963) is Roy Dunlop, born in Wedmore, England, and who worked in Western Australia before settling in Queensland. He held the lease of Little Goat Island in Moreton Bay, living in a cabin that he built himself. His green-coloured sloop was called Adventuress.
5 A yacht owned by Fairweather’s brother Arthur.
6 David Ben-Gurion, Zionist statesman and first prime minister of the modern state of Israel.
191. To Lina Bryans
Bribie Is–May 16 [postmarked Bribie Island, 20 May 1963]
Dear Leana. Its good to hear from you after this long while and that you are all right again–I am not in the hospital–thank goodness–That was a year ago–a horrible experience–You remember I had a small spot behind the ear and you took me to a doctor and he burnt it–But when I went north it came back, only this time inside the ear lobe. Curiously the raft journey–all that salt water–cured it–and in England for a year there was no sign of it–but as soon as I came back here–it started again (I told you I was allergic to this climate–How I hate the unwashed unheated winters–oh well–it could be so much worse.) So in the end had to go to hospital–they skined the inside of the ear and took a piece off my chest to put in its place–At least that is what they said they were going to do but actually they took away a lot of cartilage that holds up the ear as well–The operation was successful but the ear is now a dogs ear–What was horrible about it was seeing all the afflictions to which flesh is heir to–Even all the nylon stockings of the nurses–even their very fetching nose bags that leave only their eyes peeping at one, nothing could make one forget the broken bodies That but for the Grace of God–should be my lot also–Why not–and how not–Does not bear thinking about–Just to be thankful for the sun–while it lasts–I haven’t had to go back–thanks be–
Been very busy–more and more frustrated–destroying the best, for lack of faith and a sentimental yen for the pretty pretty–Wont bear thinking of, what has been burnt–and gone under–so many broken ends–
I am happy to hear from you–Something from way back–a thread not broken–I thought when I left M[elbourne]–that you had hung up on me and I was very miserable at the time–life all chopped up in pieces no connection–no sense–Perhaps you can understand–you are a Jew–one of the chosen people who now rule the earth–My miserable forebears–broken bits of empire–now the most hated people on earth–the most despised–How can one make head or tail of anything–I’m reading Thoreau1–he came from Jersey–lived in a hut–and science fiction–and fairy stories–May the sun continue to shine on you Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854). Jersey was the birthplace of his paternal grandfather, who emigrated to America in 1773.
192. To Helga Macnamara
Bribie May 19– [postmarked 1963]
Dear Pippa A German doctor I hear has made a translation of the Chin ping mei and an American translation from that is shortly to be published–in America–And all this time my translation has been in your hands1–
I did not think very much of it but anything to do with sex has a market a sort of Chinese Casanova–A very un-Chinese idea I thought–though otherwise its curiously conventional–The chapters all end with the formula–‘Read on and you will learn what happens in the next chapter’ Just like the adventures of Chi tien of which you have a copy–and I was depressed to find that the great Dream of the Red Chamber–referred to as tops in that class of Chinese literature–is almost the same old formula–I think Chi tien is better–and those 6 short stories–‘The amulet of some body or other’ are the nicest things yet–However in view of the American publication–perhaps your friendly publisher might consider an English version–or would care to read it–If so do please get it typed–only on a good machine–this time–If you are bored with the whole thing ship all the MSS to my sister Q[ueenie] who seems likely now to settle in Jersey and can collect the pieces–The clock ticks faster and faster and I doubt if I shall ever find time to do much more translating–Sad–because at long last have got in touch with a most enthusiastic sinologue in New York to advise and help– So long Yrs
Ian
1 Likely Bernard Miall’s Chin P’ing Mei: The Adventurous History of Hsi’men and his Six Wives (1939, reprinted 1959), the English translation of Franz W. Kuhn’s Kin Ping Meh oder Die abenteuerliche Geschichte von Hsi’men und seinen sechs Frauen (1930).
193. To Clark Massie
Dear Massie– Agh!! its cold–but have gone a bust and bought some new woolen underwear–refuse to be driven into bed with the birds–these long winter nights–The PVA has arrived and many many thanks I feel bad about putting you to so much trouble I shall make this lot last a long long time–Am exploring its possibilities and the virtues there are in economy–Just managed to finish the last lot (of paintings) in time, I believed, for the Sao Paolo show, but they tell me they are too late–and will have to send some old ones–Perhaps as well–for not at all sure about these last lot–too much of a hurry–
Relaxing now and (almost) having some fun Was sorry to hear you had no luck with the poem–These thickheaded editors.–I think I told you I had submitted a translation from the Chinese to Mac Auley–and he was plain rude about it1 I see his portrait in Bonython’s book 2–If I had seen that first I would have known better than send it–looks a real bastard Have since got in touch with a most enthusiastic Calligraphist (Chinese writing) in New York–Sent a wonderful letter (10 pages) where to get books etc–His name and address–beautifully written in Chinese characters on the envelope and chopped all over like a Chinese picture with large red seals–quite a curio–will show it you when you come down–Some rather distressing news about a MSS–sent home for typing some 3 or 4 years ago–A long book about a Chinese Casanova–It has lain gathering dust all that time–my pert little niece couldn’t be bothered with having it typed–though asked many times–now I hear a German translation of it has been made and an English one from that is to be published in America–Too late again–However I may be appearing in print in the Bribie Star–For the bridge celebrations they sent up to photograph the old place and asked me to write a biographical note but dont think what I wrote was quite what they wanted and much too long–But still an iron in the fire–Strange that one should want to see oneself in print–Sibley has been down here for a weekend–with his wife of two months–rather charming3–says he will leave soon for Melbourne–Took him down that road we went to waterworks–near the beach–the car bogged down–Miraculously they had been netting mullet on the beach, and a big land rover came past and pulled us out
I suppose this cold weather will not tempt you to come down–but looking forward to see you again
Best wishes and best regards Yrs Ian
P.S. Let me know freight cost–tin–etc etc–
1 James McAuley, Sydney-born academic and poet, and founding editor of Quadrant magazine.
2 Fairweather mistakenly identifies the subject of Jack Carrington Smith’s portrait, which is of Professor A. McAuley. See Bonython, Modern Australian Painting & Sculpture: A Colour Survey of Australian Art 1950–1960 (1960).
3 Andrew Sibley (1933–2015), English-born artist who settled in Queensland with his family in 1948. In July 1963 he married his first wife, Andrea Gibson.
194. To Helga Macnamara
Dear Pippa Thank you a lot for all you have done–and let me know how much it has cost. I would like a copy to make corrections–Though I doubt if there will ever be the time–Also of course too bored–like to push on to new things–Hope in that direction somewhat revived–Have got in touch with enthusiastic Calligrapher–Sent me a wonderful envelope written with the brush in large Chinese characters–and chopped with his red personal seals–Quite a work of art I think must be the only European (American ) who has really mastered the brush1–Kindly complimented me on my own writing–says I have a real feeling for the 字 [characters] so cheered–Given me some addresses in New York etc etc–where can perhaps get a good Chinese tale to translate–However if you can still contact the Mr Ragg–do you remember–who seemed cooperative at Kegan Paul2–ask him to pick a nice tale for me–I got a collection of tales–(Tales of Warring) from Collets Chinese Bookshop 40 Gt Russell St–If you are in town one day–look in–tell me what sort of place it is–got a lot of stuff there it seems–But their Tales–are very difficult the worst–most literary I’ve ever struck many 字 not in my dictionary–so progress very slow but not quite marking time–Bye and thanks
Yrs Ian
P S. He (the Calligrapher) tells me that now on account of my age I am by Chinese reckoning a Venerable–and entitled to the 尊者 in place of the plain 先生 Mister3–
1 Irving Groupp, also known as Ge Lepu 葛樂圃, who later resided in Santa Monica.
2 Routledge & Kegan Paul, British publisher .
3 ‘Zunzhe’ means ‘honoured’, ‘respected’ or ‘venerable one’; ‘xiansheng’ is a term of respect for an elder or teacher and also means ‘mister’.
195. To Annette Waters
Dear Q. Sorry about not writing–There has not been much to say and I have been tied up answering all sorts of letters–Astonishing how getting ones name in the paper makes all kinds of people write to one for the craziest reasons–send books on Buddhism Flying saucers–Yoga–etc and worst of all send me their poems–one crazy old grandmother–who has been writing for over a year at last descended on me–I found her a room in a guest house and the landlady has been cackling ever since about the mad woman who came to stay with her and lectured her on Krishnamurti1–Also I have been stuck for a picture to be raffled at the opening of the bridge–the proceeds to the Pensioners League 2–The last thing I want to see, one of my paintings kicking around–where I can see it and hear what’s said–dont mind in faraway Sydney–Well I couldn’t exactly refuse they have been kind to me here, letting me stay rent free–So had to send one–Also they’ve been taking photos of me and the hut–I suppose I am a bit of local colour to draw the tourists–I’ll be sending you the photos etc later–am waiting to get a copy of ‘Art and Australia’ in which there are several reproductions of my paintings–some which are said to be mine and which certainly are not–and none of the ones I would most like to see reproduced–Too weary to protest about it–one gets no change By and large it is not too bad–I think you may like it–Also of course the weather–bitter cold nights–only thing to get into bed at sundown Trouble is I am an insomniac–I really never sleep at all–Delighted to find that Loren Eisley (enclosed) is another one–So feel in good company His (The immense journey–Mind as Nature etc well worth reading)3 And these cold nights are hard to get through–An ex tea planter who lives in a Folkswagen here gives me a lift about the place sometimes–and the other day discovered this grand piece of driftwood–(photo enclosed) my pride and joy–and carted it back–I read that universities in America are now using Telstar to broadcast television courses world wide In adult education4–all sorts of most interesting things–if one can tune in on it–I have never had the least wish to possess a radio or TV but this sounds really something–But how to latch on–If you hear anything about it–tell me am very curious–Too busy to do any Chinese
Am getting around to being a complete vegetarian believe good for constipation–The TV people paid me £5 for an interview–what do you know!–but this darn magazine (A in A) have still not sent me a copy–Though everyone else seems to have got one–will have to buy one–insult to injury–be good Yrs Ian
1 Jiddu Krishnamurti, Indian-born speaker and writer on philosophical subjects who travelled the world speaking to groups and individuals.
2 China Tea (1963) was donated for the raffle to be drawn on 11 November 1963.
3 Loren Eiseley, American anthropologist and natural-science writer, author of The Mind as Nature (1962).
4 The Telstar communications satellites were launched in 1962 and 1963.
196. To Margaret Olley
Bribie Aug 12 [postmarked 1963]
Dear Miss Olley.
Glad to hear you are coming down–19th–though things are in the usual mess–and I can offer no kind of hospitality to anyone–you make me very ashamed–And thanks there is nothing I need much at the moment–Some kind person sent me some woolies from Alan & Stark but with no note to say who it was from1–Am suspecting Carl Plate who was here2–but so far no clue–People are much too kind–make me feel I am growing horns and a tail–
Making you a present of raffle ticket which I hope for your sake you dont win–Do hope the weather will hold for your trip down. Sincerely Yrs
Ian Fairweather
1 The Allan & Stark Drapery Store in Brisbane, later a quality department store.
2 Carl Plate (1909–77), Australian modernist painter.
197. To Annette Waters
Dear Q Enclosed is a photo of my kitchen outhouse–driftwood store etc etc–Taken by a visitor–Gives a good idea of it–Thought you might like it–The inscription over the door is ‘Om Mani padme hum’–a Buddhist incantation written in Chinese which I put up by way of a lucky charm–The reason I am writing this is that at last there is some hope of getting some of these Chinese translations–printed–A law professor from the U here came down wanting to buy a painting1–I had none to sell but we had a pleasant conversation and he took away the MSS of a Chinese book that Helga got typed for me, years ago but so far has met with no takers–Well he gave it to the Chinese faculty to read–and today the Chinese prof. (an American) came down very interested2–and thinks he may persuade them to print it–Still nothing definite–but I feel things are beginning to pop in that direction–So I should like to have some other stories to show–So–will you ask R. to please go ahead and get what I have sent her typed–2 copies and send me one–I am affluent at the moment–and can pay–
Must stop here–Life getting more and more of a rat race–and no time left for any thing–
out of breath–
out of language.
unspeakably Yrs,
Ian
1 Paul Gerber (1924–2013), Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Queensland, who played a key role in promoting the publication of what would become The Drunken Buddha (1965).
2 Clayton Bredt: see letter 213.
198. To Annette Waters
Bribie Aug 31 [– 4 September 1963]
Dear Q Someone has sent me a long article about Marjorie Ozanne the bird woman of Guernsey1–I’m wondering if you have ever heard of her–She doctors derelict birds back to health–When the Germans came she went around collecting all the cage birds people had left behind in their hurry to get out of the island. Seems rather a delightful person–And you have got Gerald Durrell in Jersey–You should read his Drunken Forest–about a collecting trip to S America2–When the war came he had to leave most of his pets–and turned them loose but they wouldn’t leave him–Animals soon get such friends–given half a chance–but people will keep dogs and cats–I have really come to hate cats since they killed my birds here–I am a bit alarmed for their safety–Some are so tame now they take food out of my hand though I dont encourage them–in case some prowling cat will come around–One brute of a cat used to lie in wait near the place where I feed them–But I think I am getting known now amongst the cat and dog population and very few venture up here now–I’d shoot them if I had a gun The old goanna still comes around–and still tries to bite my toes if I give him a chance–Though he goes away six months at a time he always comes back–always knows me–Its nice!–These, if I were to go, I would certainly miss–and I think they would miss me–
And the old donkey the Americans brought here during the war and turned loose–he is still here–all alone–he must be around 25 years old He comes often at night like a grey ghost I find him outside the door–Quite startles me sometimes–the grey colour makes him almost invisible in a dim light–Just his big white face sticking out–These are all so welcome–but the people that this publicity brings around I could well do without–in fact its got me so rattled that I have, as you guessed, been toying with the idea of coming home–Just to get out of it get a little peace–If I came though I would not come to Jersey–I rather hanker at times for old Chelsea–Or I might if I could find a good place compromise with Peckham Rye–Rushy Green Lewisham–for old times sake–but doubt if I have money enough–Chelsea has been home ever since you and mother came around in a cab with me and we found one in Yeomans Row my first lodging3–It was nice too some really arty theatrical people–a bit crazy but kind-hearted and not phoneys–true believers in the big big A R T–So I got off on the right foot there–Dear old Chelsea–Its still full of A R T–But of course with me it’s a bath for Christ sake–a hot bath to relax in–and clean clothes–I want most–By the way some kind person has sent me a parcel of woolies from a store in Brisbane–no name–I have written to everyone possible who might have sent it–a complete mystery
Been waiting all day for a man from the Gallery here to come and see what I have got done–Its not much and its nearly killed me to do that much–There’s always a rush like this–no rest–I feel awful tired–They are sending a show of Australian Art all round the world4–
Well, he never came–telegraphed–but of course I’m away in the bush–didn’t get the wire Just waited–all day–bored–out of good books–Did read one good one lately–can recommend–but you must have patience with it to get the flavour–‘Catcher in the Rye’5 also the Tin Drum if you are ambitious–If I keep this photo album much longer will lose it or the white ants get it–So send–Keep the picture of me and ravens, and there is one of Corie and Tommy Brock–
P S–Why with a charming name like Corisande did you call her Rosemary6–Such a mouthful–From now on she is Corie to me.
P P.S The other photo album has still some blank pages in it which I am filling up–Slowly
P P P.S
P P P.S The one of Helga in the back I would like to keep Shows what a little witch she was at that age
P P P P.S Just read Kingsley Amis–My Enemys Enemy7–Description of life in the Army excellent–A lot of old cats in a cage–and social workers–Give Corie
P P P P P S Sept. 4
Well, that man about the pictures came at last–I had sat up all night to finish something for him to choose from–I thought being an assistant director at the Gallery and all8–
Well he wasn’t a man at all–a crummy little boy just out of school–with pimples–Somehow I feel very depressed They took away two of my best paintings that had cost me hell to do–They obviously knew nothing about my painting and cared less–one wonders what it is that one works for–They may have been phoneys for all I know–Stolen my paintings–
There is never anyone that comes here that is honest to goodness anything–Social climbers–all on the make–Art seems to attract the worst kind of people–
I’m getting very sick of it all.
1 Amateur naturalist Marjorie Ozanne wrote stories published in the Guernsey Evening Press.
2 The Drunken Forest (1956).
3 15 Yeoman’s Row off Brompton Road in Chelsea, London.
4 ‘Australian Painting Today: A Survey of the Past Ten Years’ opened at the Queensland Art Gallery on 19 September 1963 and toured to state galleries in Australia, then a number of venues in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. The catalogue, prepared by Robert Smith, included Epiphany (1962) from the collection of Queensland Art Gallery, African Family (1963) and Cyclops (1963).
5 J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951).
6 Fairweather’s niece Rosemary Corisande Waters.
7 My Enemy’s Enemy (1962), a collection of short fiction.
8 Robert W. Smith, Deputy Director, Queensland Art Gallery, 1960–65.
199. To Robert W. Smith
Dear Robert Smith–
Thanks for sending catalogue1 as for the monograph–very noble of you to undertake so thankless a task2 Will be glad to offer what assistance I can–The bridge should soon be completed–should make things easier–then–all the best
Yrs. Ian Fairweather
Robert W. Smith (b. 1928). Perth-born art curator and academic who was Deputy Director, Queensland Art Gallery, 1960–65. He worked closely with Director Laurie Thomas in curating the travelling show ‘Fairweather: A Retrospective Exhibition’, which opened in Brisbane in 1965. Later a Reader in Fine Arts at Flinders University in Adelaide, he prepared the authoritative entry on the artist in the Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon (2003).
_____________
1 Australian Painting Today: A Survey of the Past Ten Years. The catalogue included a foreword by Laurie Thomas and an introduction by Robert Hughes.
2 The Australian Art Monograph Series was published in Melbourne by Georgian House. A Fairweather volume did not eventuate.
200. To Donald Friend
Dear Donald Friend
I am really enjoying some of the books you sent–Many thanks for the kind thought–
Bridge opened today–the stream of cars passing never lets up for a minute–become a part of the town–alas–
Not much luck among books lately
The Tin drum was something–
Monkey and Zen flesh Zen bones1–a sore disappointment–
Best–though I doubt if it would be much to your taste–animals The incredible journey–Sheila Burnford nice for children2–
Yes if you go [to] Thursday Is–please keep eye open for vacant shed–getting a bit restless here–So long and thanks–Yrs
Ian Fairweather
P.S The photos didn’t turn out so good or would have sent one
PP.S over
PPS. A horrid thought–Things get so mixed–You may think I am referring to the two books you sent–Nabokov–because there is a monkey on the cover–and the Zen book (but the character 春 on the cover is Spring ought–presumably to be 禪 Chan = Zen = meditation–For goodness sake don’t think that–I am delighted with them both–No! I meant Monkey translated by Waley–was looking forward to it–With all the archives to draw on–I’ve stumbled on better And Zen flesh zen bones Paul Reps–a dictionary of texts–I found ‘Zen it was Murder’3–more illuminating–
Donald Stuart Leslie Friend (1915–89). Artist and diarist born in Sydney into a pastoral family. An inveterate traveller for much of his life, Friend lived for several years in Bali. Well known in his day, he attracted admirers and detractors for the exuberant eroticism of his art. His reputation has suffered following posthumous revelations in his diaries concerning his sexual life with minors. In a diary entry in August 1963 he wrote a perceptive account of a visit with Margaret Olley to meet Ian Fairweather at his home on Bribie Island.
_____________
1 Wu Ch’eng-en, Monkey. Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley (1945); Paul Reps (ed.), Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre–Zen Writings (1957).
2 Sheila Burnford, The Incredible Journey (1961).
3 H. R. F. Keating, Zen There Was Murder (1960).
201. To Annette Waters
Dear Q. Yesterday the bridge was opened marching girls bands–all the works Bribie in flags–But ever since, one long drone of cars passing bumper to bumper–Going down to the village for my bottle of milk–had to walk in the ditch–all the way–Am sending this paper because for the first time I am Speaking in print for myself1–Had the greatest difficulty–getting it in–They stuck a nosey old lady reporter–not satisfied with what I gave her wanted all sorts of domestic info. Flatly refused! (they have written such bilge about me)–Said take it intact or leave it–Well they took it–very surprised–put in a bad photo (the ones I sent you better) but at least appearing in my own words thats an improvement–And for Gods sake, ‘World famous artist’–all my teeth on edge–How I loathe em–
Yrs Ian
1 ‘Bribie’s World Famous Artist: How Ian Fairweather First Came to Bribie’, Bribie Star, vol. 2, no. 19, 19 October 1963.
202. To Clark Massie
Bless You– You have found me a real treasure–and please buy The incredible journey by Sheila Burnford–as a birthday present for junior and give it to him from me about ten years hence1–it gave me a big lump in the throat–Hope it gives him one too–Yrs Ian Fairweather
P.S. The Claret is Douglas Elliot–
Hunter River Hermitage–
Can be got I now hear at a place in the Valley–near Oxlade2–
If you ever come down please bring at least a flagon–
1 Andrew Massie.
2 Oxlades Paint and Art Centre, 136 Wickham Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.
203. To Helga Macnamara
Dear Pippa– The U here are considering the publication of ‘Joy’–Hooroosh!–The Chinese prof. will write an introduction–historical background etc–and I have to re-edit and correct the MSS. So will need the original–four little vols in a case–Could you please send them to me if poss–airmail–charge it to typing account–This is a blow–having just finished a batch of paintings for a show and feeling quite exhausted–Counting on a bit of a holiday–now this!–and to make it worse they want some illustrations–otherwise wont have much sale–No profit intended–but at least dont wish to cause them loss and the illustrations they hope and I, may lift it into the black Quite wonderful after so long–may one dare to hope?–Well–getting near Christmas Temperature here climbing into the hundreds Want to be happy–want you to be happy–Smell of Boronia in the bush–but alas–Bribie is no longer an island the bridge is open–Integrated–
Regards and wishes Yrs Ian
204. To Helga Macnamara
Bribie 21 Nov– [postmarked 1963]
Dear Pippa– Come to think of it–What I need is the MSS translation–rather than the original Chinese book–
So please send that–too
This publishing business has wheels within wheels–Now they want to appoint an editor (this is the U press a non-profit business) They propose to pay him £150 for his labours–I shall get nothing at all–except perhaps my initials on some illustrations which as yet are non-existent The typescript has gone through to Canberra and I hear has been OKd by them also1–
So some hope that it will one day see the light–after many squeezes on the way–truly oriental–or what we used to call oriental but now–it seems–come home to roost–paisan2
Happy days Yrs
Ian
Apologies–Sorry to trouble you
1 The manuscript had been reviewed by Igor de Rachewiltz, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Australian National University.
2 Colloquial expression for friend or compatriot, from the Italian paisano, ‘peasant’ or ‘rustic’.
205. To Treania Smith
Dear Miss Smith. A great relief to hear the paintings have arrived all right and thank you for the cheque–About Closing Time–Gruber1 has been very kind about getting my translation read–at the U here So am most beholden to him and told him I would not charge him anything for the painting–only for the freight and frame–I hope this will not put you to any inconvenience
I have been rather tempted to invest in a bit of land where we went for a picnic A new road reaches it now–So one has not got to go by water–but I have the feeling if I moved at all, I would like to go far–very far–There is always the threat of this skin cancer here–I keep it in check with difficulty–if it should get loose–must be ready to go–So can make no plans–no anchor–
Best wishes to yourself and Mrs Turner.
Sincerely Yrs Ian Fairweather
P.S. Please suppress the one called ‘Tea set’ 2–unfinished–I did not like the number 13 so added it to make up 14 when Grubers picture was deducted–But a mistake–had better be burnt–
1 Closing Time (1963) was promised to Paul Gerber, University of Queensland.
2 Tea Set (1963) was included in ‘Ian Fairweather: A Posthumous Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings’, Macquarie Galleries, 3–15 September 1976.
206. To Margaret Olley
Bribie Dec. 24. [postmarked 1963]
Dear Miss Olley.
Have adopted a new Chinese name–飛環 [ Fei Huan written upper right]–The nearest they can get to mine is Fei–There are about 100 Feis and nearly all have some uncomplimentary connotations–they told me–but I think with the tongue in the cheek–that my fei was 費, which means waste–So have been looking for something less derogatory–one cannot choose any–for only certain feis are used in names by custom–which I dont know1–But at last have discovered one reputable old gentleman of the Tang period–a poet whose name is Fei–means, more or less, flying around so harmless–I hope–was very glad to hear you are thinking of coming down again but feel I cause you a great deal of trouble–it is a long ride–Very sorry to hear about Drysdale2–would have missed it in the paper
Happy New Year–Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Fei 費 is a Chinese surname. It also means ‘to spend’, ‘to waste’ or ‘to consume’. Fei 飛 is not a surname and means ‘to fly’; ‘quickly’ or ‘rapidly’; or ‘in the air’. 飛 was most likely a pen name of the poet mentioned by Fairweather. Huan 環 can be a Chinese surname and means ‘around’ or ‘to surround’, a jade ring or bracelet.
2 Russell (Tas) Drysdale (1912–81), English-born artist who came to Australia in 1919. Drysdale’s son Timothy had committed suicide in July 1962, then his wife, Elizabeth (Bon) Drysdale, in November 1963.
207. To Treania Smith
Bribie–Jan 20. [postmarked 1964]
Dear Miss Smith– I think you would not recognise Bribie Passage these days–Yachts and catamarans and speed boats crisscrossing–with water-skiers in tow–very gay–They have a road now to where we went for a picnic–I had thoughts of getting a block of land there–but for those on the waterfront they are asking £1200–We went further to the White Patch–where the land rises and there are still wonderful trees, untouched–but I hear it has fallen into the hands of a rapacious Chinese woman–who is asking even higher prices–so we came back again–but a nice outing this warm weather–
We have had a circus here–Elephants on Bribie1–really we are coming of age–
However am not sorry the holidays are over–getting tired of walking in the ditch to make way for the cars–thank you for writing and the cheque–and I dont think Gruber will mind waiting a bit longer for his painting–at least I hope not–
Hope all is well with you–Sincerely
Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Alfredo’s Circus. ‘Circus Visits Bribie’, Bribie Star, 17 January 1964.
208. To Treania Smith
Dear Miss Smith
I have just heard from Paul Gerber to say the painting–Closing Time, has arrived safely–Just want to say thank you for sending it–Very tied up with these illustrations for the Chinese tale–(as yet without a name–) a problem to solve–a headache but I think doing me a lot of good–The stream of cars over the bridge still continues–brought one surprise visitor–Colin Mac Innes and a pleasant excursion up the passage turtle watching1–
Thankful to say no ills to speak of hope–you also– Sincerely
Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Colin MacInnes (1914–76), English writer who spent several months in Australia and New Zealand conducting research for the Time Inc. publication Australia and New Zealand (1964), in which he profiled Fairweather and two other Australian artists.
209. To Donald Friend
Dear Donald Friend
Thank you a lot for the books I was just getting hard up for something to read–They are very welcome–
Hows things? Hope you are happy–and not caught in the jungle of Kings Cross1–I keep on hearing about it–very naughty by all accounts a witches cauldron–Nolan I hear is headed for the Antarctic2–
‘Comme c’est doux de ne rien faire quand tout s’agite autour de nous’3
Or is it? Sincerely Yrs
Ian Fairweather
1 For years the principal red-light district of Sydney.
2 Sidney Nolan had visited Antarctica the previous month.
3 ‘How sweet it is to do nothing when everything around you is hectic’.
210. To Helga Macnamara
Bribie. Feb. 9– [postmarked 1964]
Dear Pippa A turn in the road–I think I have found a typist on the island–Bribie is growing and there are now some estate agents who run to decorative typists in the office I tried out a small story on one and it was done–most efficiently by the next morning1–I am afraid this is too good to last–It happened to be about love in a tower–but she may not be so pleased with the others–However want to give it a try–So please–collect all MSS not yet typed–and send me–It will be a great relief to have things all in one place–it seems, the one I had tentatively called–Joy–is a well known old classic–known as the biography of Chi-tien the drunken Buddha–and they have so dubbed it–The illustrations are giving me hell–Some of the tales I sent you I find repeated in another collection I am working on–So they too are no doubt old chestnuts to the Chinese. All seem to date from the Tang–The Chinese Athenaeum–Am sending you a little book I hope you will like–and I have word of another when can get it from publisher
So long the best Yrs Ian
P.S. And let me have the bill–to date–
1 Karen Dinte, who was working at Len Healy Real Estate.
211. To Treania Smith
Dear Mrs Bennett1– Thank you for writing and the cheque–One can get to feeling very down in this hot weather–I dont ever remember it being so hot–The legs are getting like rubber–I tried out a push bike–for even the road down to the shops is getting about as much as I can manage–but found the bike little help–also with all this traffic on this narrow road a public menace–
So back to footing it–and hoping for a cloud to hide the sun–There have been two offers to write this book–One from the Lansdowne Press another suggesting Gleason 2–as he has certainly reviewed most of my work–Margaret Olley was going to bring him down, but etc etc–nothing further–to report–So in the mean time sweating it out! Still a long way from a book–full of presentable illustrations–All I can say is I am working on them–and getting somewhere I believe–but very little to show for it–
I am sorry if I didn’t sound grateful for the Xmas hamper all the bottles of jam were broken – an awful mess – and in any case I never eat jam–So all rather sad
please excuse–Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 In December 1962, Treania Smith had married Clive Bennett, a friend for thirty years. From this time onward Fairweather addressed her variously as Miss Smith and Mrs Bennett.
2 James Gleeson (1915–2008), Australian surrealist painter and art critic, was planning to write a monograph on Fairweather. He visited Fairweather in October 1964 and again in July 1969. Gleeson noted in his diary (5 July 1969): ‘He was quite happy to have a book written, but wanted to see the photographs before they were made into blocks…He is not keen to have a biographical introduction to the book because, he said, “my life has been a failure” and “I don’t want to have it published”’; and (6 July 1969), ‘When we went to collect Fairweather for lunch he was too sick to come with us. He really looked very ill, and old – too ill and old to be really concerned about the book – so we left him.’
212. To Annette Waters
Dear Q. Autumn moon–and getting a bit cold down here–and feeling old–Just had a letter returned from dead letter office–addressee deceased–Inside it said he died six years ago–and he was younger than me–He was the lad I shared a studio with at Swiss Cottage–Pity you never saw it–it had been a palm house–a very high greenhouse–all glass–They had put in a floor half way up, the top part was our studio–The bottom part was a School of Eurythmic dancing–Lying at night under the glass roof–the street lights made a sort of moonlight–Hell, we used to dream of far off places–A[lston] got a job with the widow of Benjamin West looking after his remains and never left1–though the going was tough I believe at times–I didnt often write he was a bad penfriend–but it was a shock to hear he was gone–When I was at Ellas I went round to see the old place–it was a black ruin–a bomb had got it–And today there is another link with those days–You remember my other friend who went mad–He sometimes shared that studio with me–We were a strange assortment of characters–but we got on fine–even down to the dear old char–Ma Coollins–born in Bow she was–as English as a kipper–Yes I wish you had come to visit me there–Well as I was saying poor old George went mad–and now I have just seen in the papers that our local Tarzan–the wild man who wandered the north country mostly naked and tried like me to cross in a canoe to New Guinea has been arrested–The inhabitants in the outback were terrified of him–though he never hurt anything but wild pigs–charged with vagrancy 2–I sent him some money–for I hate to think of a wild thing caged–and felt a kind of fellow feeling for him though I have never met him–
Well some darn fool of a doctor now has pronounced him insane and he is to be locked up–Another friend behind bars–
Kind of sad–Autumn moon–
Bye now Yrs Ian
1 The reference here is to Fairweather’s Slade School contemporary R. W. Alston and his curatorship of the Watts Gallery in Surrey. Benjamin West is a slip of memory: Fairweather means George Frederic Watts. See letter 30.
2 Michael Fomenko was sentenced to six months’ jail and detained at the Ipswich Special Mental Hospital for ‘at least six months’. Canberra Times, 29 April, 1964.
213. To Clayton Bredt
Dear Mr Bredt–Thank you for return of the MSS and for the extra copy of the Yen tse lou Since you were here I have received a copy of Fenn’s 5000 character dictionary1–but I still feel that Soothill is a loss to the world2–Though I have only had Fenn a few days I have had to refer back to Soothill for about 1 doz. characters which it does not list–although Soothill only lists 4000–The 5000 字 [characters] in Fenn are the ones they had printed on cards and issued to students of the old language school in Peking–They carried the cards round in their pockets. –On one side was the 字, on the other the sound & meaning And what a loss to the world is that dear old language school–I have the happiest memories of it–It also can never be replaced–
Soothills system of grouping the 字 by the phonetic symbol makes looking them up almost a pleasure–Cannot somebody be persuaded to revive it–
When in Shanghai I came across another system–a Chinese invention–Nine kinds of corners were distinguished by numbers So at a glance one could read any character as four numerals3–then it was simple to look up–But for one like myself who is rather repulsed by figures and arithmetic all these methods–even the logical radicals tend to dehumanise the 字–
I still feel there is a crying need to revive Soothills family groups of phonetics–They are not logical–and the exceptions are almost as many as the rest–Yet I feel eminently suitable to the 字, which are also illogical
Am getting on slowly with the illustrations Hope to be able to write some time to let you know they are ready.
Sincerely Yrs
Ian Fairweather
Clayton Bourquin Bredt (1929–98). American-born academic who graduated in history from the University of Michigan, served in Korea, and read Chinese history in the School of Oriental and Asian Studies at the University of London on an ex-serviceman’s scholarship before taking up a position at the University of Queensland in 1961. As Senior Lecturer in Chinese history, he was initially invited by the University of Queensland Press to prepare a reader’s report on Fairweather’s The Drunken Buddha, but later assisted with editorial revisions and wrote the introduction.
_____________
1 Courtenay H. Fenn, with Hsien-Tsêng Chin, The Five Thousand Dictionary: A Pocket Dictionary and Index to the Character Cards of the Yenching School of Chinese Studies (Peking Language School) (1926).
2 Soothill, The Student’s Four Thousand 字 [Character] and General Pocket Dictionary (1899). William Edward Soothill, Methodist missionary who spent twenty-nine years in China, later Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Oxford University. He was also on the governing board of the School of Oriental Studies.
3 The four-corner system of looking up Chinese characters encodes the strokes found at the corners of a character using the numbers from zero to nine. It was developed by Wang Yunwu, editor-in-chief at the Commercial Press, Shanghai, based on the work of Russian scholar Otto Rosenberg. The Wang Yunwu dictionary was first published in Shanghai in 1928.
214. To Treania Smith
Dear Miss Smith–
Just a line to thank you for the cheque–And your visit–which I so much enjoyed–
There has been a pleasant sequel to that unfortunate affair of the raffle The painting ‘China Tea’1 fell to a Mrs Smith who lives here–
Yesterday her son–(who actually bought the ticket and to whom the painting therefore belongs) came to see me–
He was a pilot of one of the planes that searched for me in the Timor Sea–
I never saw a plane but thought I could hear them above the clouds–
He tells me that with radar they did actually spot me–but I was too far out for them to do anything about it–
He is taking the painting back to Melbourne where he lives–Says he likes it–thank goodness–May visit Lena Bryans–Happy reunion–
pleasant thoughts– Yrs sincerely
Ian Fairweather
1 China Tea (1963) was later acquired by Lina Bryans.
215. To Robert W. Smith
Dear Robert Smith–
Glad to hear you had no ill effects from your visit here–
Very quiet just now, but I went with some friends again to the Belara Motel–was surprised to find how well appointed the rooms are–and the restaurateur is not as I supposed a Greek but a Frenchman from Monte Carlo and the Savoy Hotel London1–
Bribie getting cosmopolitan and gay–
Yes I think you have discovered or uncovered my old friend van Mastenbrock 2–the dates seem to fit–and his best picture–the one the Kaiser bought3–was of shipping in the harbor of Rotterdam–But I suppose he is no longer of this world–He was a very good friend and helped me a lot–If you come down again we must take a trip by boat up the passage–Its worth seeing–
So long. Yrs
Ian Fairweather–
1 The ten-room Bellara Motel in Benabrow Street opened on 2 February 1963. The lessee-proprietor of the restaurant was Jack Dracos. Bribie Star, 8 February 1963.
2 Johan Hendrik van Mastenbroek (1875–1945), Dutch artist, was influenced by the Hague School, Corot and the French Impressionistsis. He is noted for his paintings of the port of Rotterdam. The painting mentioned has not been identified.
3 Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, who abdicated after the end of World War I and lived in exile at Doorn in the Netherlands.
216. To Treania Bennett
Dear Mrs Bennett– Thanks for the cheque–and as for the parcel–I am quite overcome–and dont know what to say–I shall have to clean up around here–to keep up with the new clothes–If I had chosen them myself I would not have dared to be so much in the mode–but I could not have chosen anything more suitable–And so opportune–for Winter is really here now–I think I told you in my last letter–the illustrations are finished–at last–They came down–on Sat. and took them away–Impatiently waiting further news–On Sunday–the Laurie Thomas circus–tape recorder and cameramen came down–and we had an all day session1–Fortunately the tape was much better managed this time–and may have recorded some moments of sanity–They hid the machine so I couldnt see it–and didn’t know when it was working or not and hung the mike round my neck, so I forgot it was there–I may have said a lot that was not for the record–at least I hope–not on stilts–The picture part was very trying and lasted a good three hours–A little play they had–boiling a billy–going into a reverie–watching the birds?–Interesting for the producer no doubt–but quite exhausting to be a lay–figure–Gave me a headache which I still have–Probably none of it will come out–The sky was overcast and very dark all day–
The illustrations are being sent–I believe, to a printer–proofreading to be done–etc etc will be some time before they reach you–One of them I would like to reserve as a present to Frank Clune–who has sent me so many books–He wanted a small one–so have chosen the smallest–‘Chi–tien with wine jar’ 2 If and when they reach you–please note–
Miss Olley writes that Godfrey Miller has died3–that is the second old contemporary from the Slade who has past away recently–
Not many left–! Well–am really having a holiday (except proofreading) and feeling very cheerful–though I dont sound like it–and am most grateful though I cant find the words–
Sincerely Yrs
Ian Fairweather
1 Six Modern Australian Painters was presented by Laurie Thomas as part of ABC Television’s Lively Arts Series. The program on Fairweather was broadcast on 7 September 1964.
2 Chi-tien kept a jealous watch over the jar of new wine was reproduced in the The Drunken Buddha (1965). It was renamed Chi-tien with wine jar (1964) in the 1965 exhibition of the Drunken Buddha paintings, and in the 2015 reprint. It was given to Clune.
3 The painter Godfrey Miller had died in Sydney on 10 May 1964. He and Fairweather were not contemporaries at the Slade.
217. To Lina Bryans
Bribie July 5 [postmarked Bribie Island, 12 July 1964]
Dear Lena Bryans.
Just a line to thank you for your letter–and to say I am glad you have the Lit Bateau–n.b. not Bateau Lit–I borrowed the title from Colette–She had a bed she carried around everywhere with her and called it her lit bateau1–I thought it suitable for the raft as I could only lie down on it–There was only the mast to lean against and it wobbled so much–I couldn’t stay against it long–so it was much like a bed afloat–
But of course–what the hell–whats in a name–upside down–
unlucky omen?–please change–
Om manipadme hum2
Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Colette (1873–1954), French novelist. At the end of her life Colette was confined to a divan bed in her Paris apartment. She took pleasure in viewing the world from her window, installed on what she called her ‘lit-bateau’.
2 A pencil rubbing of the incantation engraved on a Mani Stone is among the Fairweather letters in the Bryans archive, though its size indicates that it was sent separately from this letter, possibly with a copy of The Drunken Buddha.
218. To Clark Massie
Dear Massie– It is freezing cold at night but has not quite defeated me yet–There is always a tremendous let down at sunset–I get into bed and shiver and think I will never get up again–but most often do–and even paint–I think I am getting somewhere–but that is not news I have been thinking it for 30–40 years–and then comes morning–But yet and still–one thing has given me a great lift–The library bless them, sent me a vol. of World Art (7 vols from the German–) This one was–Maya and Aztec arts–what a thrill–Imitative painting makes me feel quite ill–When I was in London I found I could get nothing from any of the galleries with paintings–Spent all my time in the Victoria and Albert looking at wallpapers tapestries and furniture for Christ sake–and the B M. in a dream before the Bezantine reliefs1–Cant see them too often–Must try and get the other vols–India Africa Egypt etc–No news except that I am working very hard instead of the holiday I was hoping for–See in ‘Time’ something interesting seems to be happening in Kassel–whereas the Venice show has sunk to Pop art–whatever that is 2
Read some time ago Catcher in the Rye–Salinger if you can stand Faulkner3–you could take it–Something curious about it–I liked–and now been reading his Franny and Zooey4–a lot about prayer–continuous prayer–even if only written on a wheel and span or on a streamer, fluttering in the wind–till it enters the heart and flows in the blood stream–Oh Lord Jesus have mercy on me–Trouble is I have no belief there even wa[s] a Jesus–The idea is tremendous–but I gag at the name–I would rather say O mi to fo–to the Buddha–or what you will and with no meaning–Like Om mani pad me hum–I have written outside my door–to catch the breeze–same meaning or no meaning–a breath–Going round and round with Sir Charles Reads To Hell with Culture5–Getting left behind by Whiteheads–Adventures with Ideas6–and put to sleep by Witgenstein7–Tell me of a nice bed time story and I shall bless you–Good bye now thanks for writing
Yrs Ian–
PS. Have not read the poem yet
You know I am a bit dumb about poetry
P.P.S. Charisma Cult–prayer prayer again and speaking with tongues–they say growing fast, a new religion–I fill my solitude with the craziest noises–for my amusement–make myself laugh sometimes–Begin to think perhaps I have charisma and speak with tongues
1 The British Museum holds examples of Early Byzantine (sixth-century CE) relief panels, including the famous Archangel ivory.
2 The third Documenta Internationale Ausstellung was held from 28 June to 6 October 1964. La Biennale di Venezia, one of the world’s most prestigious international exhibitions of contemporary art. The 32nd International Art Exhibition at Venice was titled 1964: The Rise of Pop.
3 William Faulkner, American writer.
4 J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey (1961).
5 Herbert Read, To Hell with Culture (1963).
6 Alfred Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (1933).
7 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-born philosopher.
219. To Annette Waters
Bribie–Aug 28 [postmarked 1964]
Dear Q– A lot of uncertainties–They are opening a lot of new land for building–cleared of bush roads–water and electricity–£500 a block and according to the latest plans a road is to be made right through my place1–So feel something has got to be done–A tempting offer of a studio flat in Soho £3000–Too much for me–So been up the passage today in a motor boat–beyond where they will ever be building for years yet–Some of the loveliest bush, almost as wonderful as Cairns–Came on a tree that looked on fire–flame-like flowers–and there were palms and many strange flowering trees–I had never seen before–and Bribie pines–In the passage there were about 60 black swans feeding–and every now and then a turtles head would come up and blow–Trouble is painting leaves me no time to–just play–However if a move is inevitable–I have never seen a more charming place–
Dont know what to do–Dont know what to do at all–next move will have to be a trip to town to the Lands Office–to find out just whats what–Do wish you were around and we could discuss it–and we could go a picnic to look it over–such a picnic–and its Spring and everywhere is the golden wattle–and the dust of pines in bloom–
By Bye Yrs Ian
1 Forty-eight allotments in Woorim and Bongaree were to be auctioned on 12 and 19 September, with an ‘upset price of £500 and £550’. ‘Sale of Govt. Allotments’, Bribie Star, 28 August 1964.
220. To Treania Bennett
Dear Mrs Bennett
Many thanks for cheque and letter–Be glad to hear what you think of the T.V. I shall not see it–Had a rush call–to go to B[risbane]–my aunt sick1–her daughter flew out from England to be with her–So went expecting the worst–but glad to say she was more or less recovered–a heart attack–Daughter I had not met before–Married to a doctor in England2–but not a doctor of medicine–as I thought of machines? or something–Well, I had a hot bath anyway–and went to a barber–and wore the beautiful shirt you sent me–and then ran into Joy Roggenkamp3 in Finneys4–how nice–how gay–
But did you read the review of my show in the Australian–not so nice5–Sister-in-law has been in Canberra–I hear6–
If I should go overseas, could I send work or would the Custom duties be prohibitive
The one thing that worries me–sincerely
Yrs Ian Fairweather
P.S. My aunt (who comes from Townsville) has discovered there another Ian Fairweather–city engineer–Number 3–Ian F.
1 Catherine (Kate) Thorp.
2 Lorna Griffith.
3 Joy Roggenkamp (b. 1928), watercolour artist who studied with Jon Molvig. Her mother, Vivienne May, and brother Kenneth Edward, also an artist, lived on Bribie Island.
4 Finney Isles & Co. department store, Brisbane.
5 Elwyn Lynn, ‘Fairweather Has Never a Storm’, Australian, 15 August 1964.
6 Margaret Brock-Hollinshead.
221. To Laurence Thomas
Dear Laurie Thomas–
I was not able to see the TV Show, but some people who did tell me it was not too bad at all–
I am very thankful and would like to express my gratitude–that you did not murder me–and to wish you all success in your worthy endeavours to forward the cause of painting and painters– Sincerely–
Yrs Ian Fairweather
222. To Treania Smith
Dear Miss Smith– Very tired–for no good reason–I fear I was under par when Gleason came–an attack of URTI [upper respiratory tract infection] perhaps accounts for the rusty loqution he speaks of–Please if you are writing thank him for the kindly thought–his article1–Everyone seems to be going away–A friend down the road sends me postcards from Vienna–One thing annoys me–who are Mark Tobey–Da Silva–Cornellie I must be getting behind the times–I have never heard of them, yet Elwyn Lynn compares my work to theirs–unfavourably, (in the Australian) 2–Would much like to see some of their work–My own work is giving me hell–I thought I was near ready to send down–but have had to practically start again–Dickerson was in here a few days ago3–Spoke of you–A house collapsed last night and killed the two occupants–They had just hauled it all the way across the island from the bridge to the ocean beach–Regards and best wishes to your self and Mr Clive Bennett–and many many thanks
Yrs–Ian Fairweather
1 James Gleeson, ‘Fairweather’s Lead to Youth’, Sun-Herald, 5 August 1964.
2 Elwyn Lynn , ‘Fairweather Has Never a Storm’, Australian, 15 August 1964. Mark Tobey (1890–1976), American painter whose densely structured compositions were inspired by Asian calligraphy. Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908–92), Portuguese-born painter and important post-war abstract artist. Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo (1922–2010), Belgian-born Dutch painter, better known as Corneille.
3 Robert Dickerson (1924–2015), Australian figurative painter who showed at the Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane.
223. To Harold Fairweather
Bribie– Oct 24 [postmarked 1964]
Dear Harold– A travelling show of Australian Art will be in Paris at the Gallerie Greuze from Nov 19 to 19 Dec1–
Thought perhaps–you or a friend might care to look in–It has some of my things–Going on to Holland Denmark Germany Switzerland Milan and Rome–
I am not sure which things of mine are there–fear nothing much–but just for Auld Lang Syne.
Yrs Ian
P.S. and Happy Xmas and New Year–
Harold Fairweather (1886–1972). A brother of Ian Fairweather, born in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. He married in 1918 Ghyslaine Henriette (née Lauwick), daughter of Captain Philippe Lauwick. Harold and Ghyslaine lived at the Lauwick family estate, the Chateau de Rastignac in La Bachellerie, near Bordeaux in the Dordogne.
_____________
1 Galerie R. Creuze, 12 Rue Beaujon, Paris VIIIe, ‘Australian Painting Today: A Survey of the Past Ten Years’.
224. To Treania Bennett
Dear Mrs Bennett
The rains came–! and everything is wet–but I think these things are almost in the bag–Have to wait till things dry out but with any luck should be sending some things in the next few days–Will let you know if actually sent off–Thank you a lot for the cheque and for looking up the paragons–I think Cornelly must be a misprint for Corneille–a Dutch painter–I have seen a lithograph of his–and take off my hat to him–Got an order to go chest clinic for Xray–again–After this URTI had some misgivings–but glad to say all’s well–Hope you are now recovered from the flu–Will be writing again shortly–I hope– Sincerely
Yrs Ian Fairweather
225. To Donald Friend
Dear Don Many thanks for the nice books–Bushfire tonight–and in fear of being burnt up–and there was a wind too, like your man with a horn
I must send you a doodle in return–but just stuck with an idée fixe my constant malady–Can you understand what an agony it is to shed ones birthright–I was born to be an effigy–I have to murder myself–‘every night and ahahahag’1–!!
I’m sending you this charming drunken conversation–In a tropical minor key [marginal note with arrow]–very dear to me–as it contains the world–our cockeyed world
You should like Science Fiction–there is no more a west to go to2–no other bourne to cross3–but space–no other left–but Andromeda’s nebula4––! I salute you–going up! or down–
Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Fairweather may have had in mind the lines ‘Every Morn and every Night / Some are Born to sweet delight / Some are born to sweet delight / Some are born to Endless Night’ from William Blake’s poem ‘Auguries of Innocence’ (1803).
2 An invocation of the phrase ‘Go west, young man, and grow up with the country’, attributed to Horace Greeley, an American author and newspaper editor who saw promise in his country’s westward expansion. Fairweather’s remark to Friend is bleak, suggesting that his own hopes for the future have dimmed.
3 Possibly an allusion to Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘Crossing the Bar’ (1889).
4 A spiral galaxy in the Andromeda constellation estimated to be some 2.5 million light years from Earth.
226. To Wayne Anderson
Dear Wayne Anderson–
Yes still in old Broiby Island–Nice of you to write after all these years–but for Pete’s sake dont call me Sir–You may be in the army now–but thank God I’m not–not any more–Nice times to look back upon–but that was 1914-18–Europe–We were still pretty civilised in those days–the part I saw of it–1914 August The Belgium France border–Almost a gentlemans war–You might say–The press, the radio, the propaganda technics were in their innocent infancy–we hadn’t learnt to hate–I remember my first night after being captured–we rode through the night jam-packed in a car–a young German officer asleep with his head on my shoulder–It wasnt till we got into Germany that they started yelling and throwing things–The civilians had been doctored–got the virus–From then on it had been a dirty business–Well–look out for your ears–I dont know how gunners can avoid going deaf–Hope you will have a happy Xmas and all the best for 1965
Yrs Ian Fairweather
Wayne Macarthur Anderson (b. 1947). Son of Helen Begg and Frederick Anderson, a soldier. Separating from her husband after World War II, Helen Anderson lived on Bribie Island with her four sons, 1952–54. It was probably during 1953–54 that Wayne Anderson met Fairweather while exploring local bush tracks. Anderson later served in Malaya in 1962, at the end of the Malayan Emergency.
227. To Clayton Bredt
Bribie 27 Nov– [postmarked 1964]
Dear Clayton Bredt–
Frank Thompson1–came down with some galley proofs–and your introduction for which I am most grateful–
He showed me two of the finished reproductions–of the illustrations They were a most pleasant surprise I had feared the worst–They had a TV show in which some of the paintings were included–which I did not see–but the gallery were none too pleased with them–The curates egg they said–good in parts–and I must say the colour slides they sent me were very depressing–So this is all a great relief and hope revives–
Mr Lu has sent me a delightful brush writing which I am ashamed to say even with the help of a dictionary I cannot read2–Only my name 費They will choose the worst of all Feis I had so hoped there was a better one available–but have to bow to authority
May I wish you a very happy Xmas and New Year.
Sincerely Yrs
Ian Fairweather
1 Manager, University of Queensland Press, 1961–83.
2 David Chung-Sian Lu, a librarian in the Chinese section of the Australian National University library.
228. To Marion Smith
Dear Marion–I recognised the candy, there was no word to say who sent it–but no one ever sends me candy but you–only for goodness sake–You must have bought half the shop–What can have got into you to be so recklessly extravagant? Have you won a Casket prize–perhaps? Well youve set me up as a Santa Claus willy-nilly–There is a charming little boy, who lives down the road–I was in buying a stuffed animal for him yesterday1 now he shall be stuffed also–and I guess I’ll have to throw a party as well–who for?
Such types have been coming here lately a few days ago a real nut–to buy a sketch an autograph–anything–I’ve bought a lock to put on the door–When I remember–
And a cloud hangs over–A Chinese from the Canberra U is coming to visit–Someone has just sent me from China a book in the new characters–cant read any–after all these years–Switch characters on me–I’m hating the Chinese–and the Congo Massacre 2–I’m not in a Christmas mood, though loaded with candy and he’s coming to see me–and I’ve got to be nice–for the sake of the book–OK I’ll be Candy Candy if I can be–so help me–Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Probably Andrew Massie.
2 The Congo Crisis of 1960–66, including the violent Simba Rebellion of 1964–65 in which thousands of innocent citizens were massacred in mercenary attacks, occurred in the context of the wider struggle for power in the Republic of Congo following independence from Belgium. The situation was complicated by the intervention of China and the Soviet Union and its allies in an attempt to stem American influence in Africa.
229. To Margaret Olley
Dear Miss Olley–Thank you for the Countryman1–I enjoyed the quiet of it–seems almost out of this world–The photos I am surprised to see have turned out2–I have twice before photographed the Dragon–but got blank both times–it is so dark under the trees–Very exasperated to see in the second one he has left out the Dragons head–However send it along–Please give one to Mrs Cam [Pam] Bell3–The circus didnt turn out so good but took some more next day–awaiting development–will send if better–They have finished the road–and are clearing along the waterfront–asking I hear £1200 a block The next jump is to the White Patch–but has to be reached by boat–Already owned by a Chinese–Mrs Kitt4–Hang her–
A little worried about the book you gave me from someone–I cannot read the name–Could you please thank her for me–it is Japanese and I cannot read a word of it–And Laurence Daws for the I Ching I dont know his address5–and really dont know what to say if I did–Do hope your mother not too tired by the long drive6–and hope I may see you again sometime–Sincerely yrs
Ian Fairweather
1 The quarterly magazine the Countryman specialised in rural life in Britain.
2 Fairweather had enclosed three black-and-white photographs: the Bribie beach; Margaret Olley and Pamela Bell looking at the Dragon, one of Fairweather’s found pieces of wood; and children looking at circus elephants.
3 Pamela Bell made a number of visits with Margaret Olley to Fairweather. Their recent visit had been commemorated in Fairweather’s painting MO, PB and the Ti Tree (1965).
4 Eileen Chun Kitt and James Ormiston were joint owners of a block of land in Toorbul Street and another at Woorim.
5 Lawrence Daws (b. 1927), Australian artist who was also in the 1961 Whitechapel exhibition in London. For a time, Daws lived and worked on Bribie Island, where he visited Fairweather regularly. He later lived at Beerwah in the Glasshouse Mountains.
6 Grace Olley.
230. To Treania Bennett
C of PO Bongaree Bribie–Is–Jan 25 [1965]
Dear Mrs Bennett– I should have guessed who the parcel of good things were from–But I had a wonderful Christmas–though I did not know who I owed it all to–and I am so glad to hear that its you–Thank you very, very much–!! The wine I regret to say has not yet arrived will check, if you like, with the local branch of Rhine Castle–My head is full of Chinese characters Mr Lu of the Canberra U has written me a nice scroll–which till this moment I havent been able to decipher–It reads ‘literaly’ ‘Spirit Strong Swallows five peaks’ which after much cerebration i.e. the 5 sacred peaks of China–i.e. the whole world, So it reads, I take it–‘Zeal conquers all’1–eureka & I shall hang it on my wall–for cheer–
Bribie smothered in tents and cars–cars–cars and no Kangaroos or emus any more–And visitors to look at foetuses–its almost indecent–May I wish you and Mr Bennett a happy New Year and append my Chinese signature according to Mr Lu
Sincerely Yrs 費益安 fei i an–
1 The calligraphy reads: 氣壯吞五嶽 費維德法家正之 大維.
231. To David Lu
Bribie. Feb 8 [postmarked 1965]
Dear Mr Lu–
Thank you so much for the New Year Greetings–And the little poem was right on the nose–I think I should have liked Tao Yuan Min–He lived outside the town–and all that1–
And I feel less aversion now to the character 費 [Fei] since you have provided for it a most respectable pedigree–
But as for the paintings–My problem now–
What can I say?–Moon shots? and all on a large scale–There is nothing I would care to send you–
With apologies I enclose–some notes from Indian paintings–Seeking an object but all is subject–alas–
Sincerely Yrs Ian Fairweather–
[Enclosed: two pages with drawings in black and blue pen of Indian figure groups]
David Chung-Sian Lu (魯大維, 魯忠翔 1913–93). Specialist in maritime law, later librarian, born in Shanghai to a Muslim family. With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 Lu (then in London) became stateless and eventually a British citizen. Head of the United College Library in Hong Kong, 1961–64, he later worked in the Menzies Library at the Australian National University in Canberra, 1964–77. Lu is the author of Moslems in China Today (1964). He taught painting and calligraphy in Canberra, and advised on the publication of The Drunken Buddha and provided the Chinese calligraphy which appeared on the case binding.
_____________
1 Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian, 365–427 CE), Chinese scholar-official who turned his back on government duty and returned ‘home’ to a life of reclusion in nature. His poems of rustic living and rural utopia have inspired Chinese brush-and-ink painters for centuries.
232. To Annette Waters
Dear Q–If it wasn’t for the expense–how nice it would be to send tape recordings–You would have to have a tape recorder as well–Well its not so terribly expensive–Perhaps–Perhaps!
I was just thinking I wish you could hear these mason wasps at work. All over my shack just now they are building little mud urns [drawing] in which they put their eggs together with an anesthesized spider Layer by layer–beautifully built up–about the size of an acorn–And all the time when they are doing it, they Sing! It goes on all the time Part of the day–That is what I would like you to hear–With a tape recorder–I could send it to you–And the green frogs that come with the rainy season Today I lifted a sack and there he was–incredibly green and smooth and polished–and when I poked him he didn’t even move but started crying Like a child–not like a frog at all–These unbelievable sounds–I would so much like to send you–and the chant of the butcher birds–when they discover the cheese I put out for them–Triumphant–Gregorian–Oh they are very possessive–Possessing the Deity–thats me–And these mason wasps–I have watched them closely–How do they make this sound?–A sort of high keening–Their wings are still–nothing I can see vibrating–? How do they do it? Its loud! as loud as a violin–And the frogs they blow out a bladder and rasp it–but not these green ones–Have they vocal chords–? To cry when they are poked and not attempt to get out of the way–I am still hoping to see one of the giant toads they imported from somewhere to protect the sugar cane–They have spread all over Australia–and I hear are even reported to have killed a dog with their venom–I used to hear them in Cairns but never saw one–They sound like a motorbike–pop pop pop.
And oh, if you could hear that symphony of the rain–as I heard it in my tin-roofed shack–The giant toads!–there were a thousand kinds of croakers in that place–Some in chorus rising and falling in waves–strident meteors–I never knew what they were–shuttling through it all–and the drum–drum of the rain–on the tin roof–Drowned!–one felt drowned–in sound–
Well. I am enclosing Groupps1 letter–for better or worse. Please dont lose it–He is an artist His card says ‘engraver of seals’–and this year–by Chinese reckoning is 乙巳2 which is to say ‘Conceal or retire the Serpent’–
Your guess is as good as mine what that may portend–He must be a nice fellow to take so much trouble over an unknown like me–European writers of Chinese are very few and far between–and he is the tops–
The cake analysis has come in and my suspicions were unfounded–in this case–I still dont know what killed the crow–It is blazing hot but I have to sit in a cloud of smoke–to keep off the mossies–Am learning to use touchwood that does not burn but smokes–The poor mason wasps cant build any more jars in the smog–but I get a few moments peace from slapping & scratching–
Bye Bye–Yrs Ian–
益安3
I conclude with the opening words of Knut Hamsun’s ‘Pan’ that have stuck in my memory.
‘Jeg sitte her i tenke pande–I paid en hytte som gi bodde–i–I pan Skosen bak hytten4–
PS. This letter from David Lu–thought you would like–So Fei is not so bad after all–that is good news–though I appreciated your variation–As a matter of fact in the dictionary it has other meanings–spend employ, use, lavish–etc–
The bottom part [with arrow pointing to lower part of character] 費貝5 means goods, property the top 弗6 is the same character as Buddha 佛7 the transcendent man–or boiling water 沸8 so its pedegree is quite respectable–
And I like the little poem–
Hope all these arrive some time–but 2 months is a terrible long time to wait–
let me know if you get them–
1 Irving Groupp, American calligrapher and seal carver.
2 Yi si or 1965, the Year of the Snake.
3 Yi’ an, a transliteration of Ian.
4 Fairweather slightly misquotes the opening lines of Pan. For the English translation see note 5 for letter 145.
5 bei 貝means ‘cowrie shells’ or ‘precious’.
6 fu, meaning ‘not’.
7 fo, combining the radicals for ‘man’ and ‘not’.
8 Pronounced fei.
233. To Clark Massie
Dear Massie– Sorry for the delay in answering your letter and thank you for the names–Been very tied up–painting going very badly and trouble with walking–old age I suppose–Got a bicycle (–push bike)–but it has no handbrake–only back pedal–which I dont seem to be able to manage–in an emergency–so have had several accidents–fallen off, bruised and sore–so laid by at present1–also–bad out-break of possum trouble again–Upset some curry–on the floor–They are simply crazy about curry–no peace since–I hear a man is lost on the island–search organized?–A circus–has arrived–The two little elephants have grown quite a bit since it was last here–and now there are four–Much has changed since I was last in town–Bus now goes a new route. Guess I will have to be coming up town again Trouble over wine, fear Lloyd has sold out of Rhine Castle–and wine turned to Vinegar–also sabotage somewhere suspect–Trouble trouble–toil and bubble 2–
Yrs Ian–
1 The bicycle was eventually given to Andrew Massie.
2 A reference to the invocation of the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1.
234. To David Lu
Bribie March 6. [postmarked 1965]
Dear Mr Lu I am sorry to have delayed so long to thank you for the little painting which I found charming–You make me feel very ashamed–I have been 3 months trying to complete one small drawing–and cant do it–so can send you nothing in return–but words–I have some excuse–I have had the flu–rather badly–
–Still feeling shakey–And much alarms–a bushfire eating all around–till sparks flew over the thatch–even a hole in my pyjamas–and something bad happening to the book. They have hired a Melbourne artist to design a cover (at great expense they say)1
Maybe it is a good cover in a Melbourne context but it murders my context–What I thought might be a context–a spiders web–across a path–and a cow passes through with the web on its horns!–A Mr Groupp, a maker of Chinese seals, has offered to carve me one–
He is an American–Is that not surprising–
Yrs Sincerely Ian Fairweather–
1 Richard Ressom (1923–91), Melbourne-born painter and graphic designer.
235. To Margaret Olley
Bribie. March 12 [postmarked 1965]
Dear Miss Olley.
Thank you for your kind letter I was afraid I might be being a nuisance–When it comes to arithmetic I always get the vapours–I regret I have kept no personal accounts–but all the relevant facts should be in my bank account–and can I suppose be dug up, if wanted–Last return–was about 7 years ago–of course my income since then has much increased–but as they told me they didn’t want to hear of me anymore–I saw no reason to confide in them–But now with civic pride arising in B[ribie]–and substandard dwellings being condemned–I feel my days here are numbered I might want to go to England–I might want a tax clearance–and I feel if I walk in on them one day–they will skin me alive So please pardon the jitters and accept my apology–Yrs sincerely. Ian Fairweather
236. To Treania Bennett
Dear Mrs Bennett– It just seems to get hotter and hotter–The Year of the Serpent Almost liquidated packing the things up yesterday–There are 12–I have written the names on them and hope you will decipher them–because they are not abstracts–though they may look like them–The one called MO–PB and the Ti tree refers to a visit by Margaret Olley and Pam Bell–though perhaps better keep it a secret–and the Scent Shop–of course there never was a scent shop on Bribie, only a girl and I dont even know her name–The swings and the bus are part of the landscape as seen from the beach outside the grocery–over my daily bottle of milk–What I mean they are not quite abstracts or mathematics–and yesterday I met the arch mathematician Elwyn Lynn–who admires our water towers–but not me–not the bush–which is all burnt up by the way1–but Mark Tobey–I have discovered him–he comes from Seattle–and Da Silva–who is a woman–I still havent met–But, introduced him to our fish
A young man is trying to catch fish on the reef–and put them in glass tanks–so people can see them–but not making much money–if any2–A shaft of sunlight striking one tank even penetrated the mathematician–So he is not all formulas–bless him–
I understand from Mr Gerber they are sending down the 12 illustrations I made for the Drunken Buddha–I so wanted them to use the title in archaic Chinese characters in blue, as in the original book as a cover–but they have hired a Melbourne artist to design one–and also introduced a lot more–I dont know what kind of an Irish stew they are going to make of it–They just dont like my drawings–Maybe they are right–Certainly they are not going to be helped by the stew–or maybe?–One never knows–I have protested, but haven’t a peep left–of this last batch–I do hope that Some may be in time to be in the Retrospective3–to hold up the tail of my coat
I hope– Sincerely Yrs
Ian Fairweather
1 A reference to Lynn’s review ‘Fairweather Has Never a Storm’, Australian, 15 August 1964. Lynn later recalled that he had been taken by Roy Churcher to visit Fairweather, finding him ‘Very quiet, gentle, polite, self-effacing, but, when pressed, as sharp in comment as anyone on his own art. I think he had an unparalleled dedication’.
2 In February 1964 Bill Stewart, a former spear fisherman, was granted a lease on South Point to build an aquarium for reef fish. Bribie Star, 14 February and 26 March 1964.
3 ‘Fairweather: A Retrospective Exhibition’, held at Queensland Art Gallery, 3 June – 4 July and subsequently in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart, 1965–66.
237. To Annette Waters
Dear Q. Nice days these–The heat is laying off–it has been the driest hottest March in 50 years no rain at all–and there should be plenty this time–yet up north they are getting floods–The nice part about it here, is no mosquitoes, wonderful–Can sit in peace–Well as always at this time the Goanna has come home to roost–Got a son along with him–Ravenous and full of electricity He chases me–and if I have no shoes on I have to do a sort of dance–with him swishing around and beating me with his tail–He is getting enormous–It is 8 years or more since we were first acquaint[ed]–and a few mornings ago there was a chortle outside the door–The Kookaburra had come in for a snack–with his wife–A big Roo was parked under a tree nearby and a little wallaby came skipping across–But there is something wrong–The Kurrajongs–or Butcher Birds had no family this year and they used to hang around all the time and piped me out and piped me home again–Now they just come in for a snack–they still chatter a thank you–but fly off again at once–I thought the trouble was the influx of people–but there has also been an influx of dingos–wild dogs–first introduced by the Malays up north–when they came to camp–and then left behind their buffaloes too have gone wild–and multiplied Hunters made a good living from the hides–but the dingoes are an unmitigated curse I hear them howling around every night–like the jackals in India–and they mate with the local dogs–The poor defenceless Roos and Emus have no chance against them–Every night they celebrate another sacrifice–Thank heaven the Goannas are day animals they are safe in the trees at night–which is just as well–for they tell me they are as good as chicken to eat–Am sending surface mail with this–the catalogue of the travelling Australian Show1 David Lu’s picture–of spring in the mountains–and I couldn’t resist sending a cutting of a Koala–asleep on its back–‘This is the life’–
Hey ho–if I had some Nembutal–perhaps
Yrs Ian
1 Likely ‘Australian Painting Today’.
238. To Clark Massie
Dear Massey– Sorry I have kept the book so long, and I fear not treated it too well–you did say–no hurry–! I wanted to send you in return some discovery–but there just hasn’t been anything–Perhaps Nicko[l]as Freeling but as yet I have not read him through1–I like him–because as you know I was once in Holland–He recalls the past–a rather momentous past for me–which unfortunately came to a full stop at the end of the 1914-18 war–when I said goodbye to romance and became a bloody art student–in dirty old London–Where now no trace of those days or those others still remains–So a displaced person–accursed by possums but befriended by reptiles
Been much into town lately–to get radiation for the nose–Began by treating a wet sore–but now seems to be healing up–I was a bit sceptical–but the apparatus–(a whole wing) is impressive–They seem to believe in it–and thankful to say I now do also–The nasty wet sore it produces, now seems to be clearing up. So Hosannahs in the highest!! Um m m–Jehovah?
Did you read Harrer about the barley meal–of Tibet–I suppose with you it wouldn’t register–but I was raised on it–My old Scotch aunts made–BF scones on a griddle–If I could but get the barley meal–if I could but get some wheat flour that hasn’t been devitalised–or cheese that hasn’t been queered by ‘Kraft’ so that even my butcher birds wont eat it–
Well I will tell you something–The Chinese boned chicken is echt–the rest is ersatz! For the good of the world the Australian shop window–and our personal metabolism–and much to our profit–will not someone put boned rabbit in a tin–? and plain baked beans–without any bloody sauce
Has plain food, plain anything a chance in a world of make-believe–of Madison Avenue–pushcart–publicity–and Hollywood–indoctrination–intoxication
Hope you come soon–and hope you bring your camera Yes I have a one track mind. Excuses Yrs Ian
1 Nicolas Freeling, English-born writer of crime fiction.
239. To Margaret Olley
Bongaree Bribie. April 8 [postmarked 1965]
Dear Miss Olley–Thank you for writing and sorry to be a pest–I am just in the doldrums–waiting for a breeze–and it doesn’t and it wont–
I have been thinking of Dili where I tried to get but didn’t1–It has mountains–it has shells–and on the islands nearby there is an art alive there–
On the other hand there is the strange New Guinea, but I understand there are restrictions Perhaps your friend Geoff Elworthy 2–but I feel I am troubling too many people–Oh for a breeze–
Just a breeze. Sincerely Yrs
Ian Fairweather
P.S–The sky is red tonight with yet another bushfire–I thought there was nothing left to burn–it has been all around here So let it burn, Je men fiche3–
1 Dili, the capital and chief port of Timor-Leste, then a Portuguese colony.
2 Wealthy Australian expatriate who lived in Papua New Guinea on a rubber plantation called Merani. He was an art collector and a friend to Margaret Olley, hosting her on a number of occasions.
3 ‘What does it matter’ or ‘I don’t give a damn’.
240. To Treania Bennett
Bongaree. Bribie–April 12– [1965]
Dear Mrs Bennett– So very glad to hear the paintings have arrived–I was getting depressed with things in general–Your letters always revive me–I shall be going to town in a day or two and will try and get things straightened out with the Tax people–
Almost I was ready to take off for Soho but have since started two large paintings and now feel too involved to walk out on them–Well! I do hope things will pan out all right–This is the Year of the Serpent by Chinese reckoning which continually worries me–though I feel that reptiles are good friends of mine–my Goanna isn’t quite a serpent–but he is a reptile–and a real pal–So perhaps!–Your cousin who lives in Brisbane paid a visit–spoke of Montrose and Breechan1–whence I came once–but have never seen–I did try to get there with a rucksac–walking–but it rained all the time–I got in the train and went back to London
‘The place of idols’, that’s Bali of course–so glad you liked it–I was hypnotised and never recovered–Sincerely Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Montrose and Brechin are former Royal burghs in Angus, Scotland. The Fairweather family house ‘Balzordie’ was in the adjacent parish of Menmuir and Fairweather forebears are buried in the grounds of the Menmuir Parish Church, Brechin. Fairweather’s grandfather James was born in Menmuir and his father in Brechin.
241. To Marion Smith
Dear Marion– This is the 13th anniversary of the night I landed from the raft on Roti island, even the moon is about the same position as it was then–I landed in the dark, but the moon came up soon after–They were fishing with torches all along the beach but they didnt see me–
Well! it is a happy anniversary–almost–! They have sent me copies of the Drunken Buddha1 I was very afraid in the process of reproduction they might–the illustrations might not come through–but am really very pleased–For once I shall have a souvenir–to keep–instead of sending everything away into the blue I will send you down a copy as soon as things straighten out a bit–
But all this makes me nervous and very tired–I dont paint to compete with anybody else–for God’s sake! Yet they bill me as one of the horses in the Macquarie stables–at odds on the tote–almost–! I long to get out of the rat race–Yet I rather envy you living in the middle of it and getting the low-down 2–Any nice bits of scandal you hear–please relay–Donald Friend lives somewhere near you3–he sends me books–They are all bad almost–but he is kind
There are so few that are kind in this bloody world Yan
1 Ian Fairweather (trans.), The Drunken Buddha, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1965.
2 Marion Smith and her mother, Edith Smith, had moved to Sydney and were living in Cascade Street, Paddington.
3 After returning to Sydney from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1962, Friend had purchased a small house in Hampden Street, Paddington, adjacent to Trumper Park.
242. To Donald Friend
Dear Donald Friend–
Sydney seems to be full of shows just now–Thank heavens mine is over–almost1–I mean to get some rest–Vain hope–there is always the next one–Anyway many thank yous for the letter and the books–For some reason, feeling curiously depressed–but hearing from you is good–
I wish I could return you some books you might like–but I dont know what you like–Will you tell me sometime? I got a kick of sorts out of ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and am surprised to find I liked Ian Flemings–World tour 2–and China 13 by a lady doctor who likes Australias sun browned land3–So long since I really liked anything. Just about turning into a salted peanut–So long
Yrs Ian.
1 ‘The Drunken Buddha’ and ‘Other Recent Works by Ian Fairweather’ were held at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 12–24 May 1965.
2 Ian Fleming, Thrilling Cities (1963). In 1959 Fleming was commissioned by London’s Sunday Times to explore fourteen of the world’s most exotic cities.
3 Ida Caroline Mann, British ophthalmologist who after her retirement in 1949 moved to Australia, where she worked in remote Aboriginal communities. Writing as Caroline Gye she published two books about her travels; the second is China 13 (1964).
243. To Margaret Olley
Bribie June 22 [postmarked 1965]
Dear Miss Olley–
Thank you for figures–
Do I owe Mr Corley1 a fee for these?
As you say the show was interesting period2–!
Some crackpot has written the Editor of the Australian–re the Drunken Buddha, which he says is ‘The Ultimate Insult’ (in capitals)–To the Chinese, I suppose3–They passed it on to me!–I saw a poster for Air India with a dirty old man in an overcoat holding it out to disclose what it concealed–Psst! Psst! Naughty pictures! he was saying4–
I felt what a senseless insult to our only friends left in Asia–and began to sputter for somebody–Now I see myself reflected–Another crackpot–I say no more–
What happens beyond the end of my brush is not my business–not any more–
Sincerely Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Probably an accountant. Fairweather was concerned about his income tax. Treania Bennett had written to Fairweather, 16 June 1965: ‘Please don’t worry about the figures we gave M. Olley–we take off framing & expenses…We deduct all our expenses framing, freight, commission etc & it is all down in a part of the books devoted entirely to you. As well we have money held in trust for you but we feel you should only declare income cheques actually received–off which the accountant can deduct sums for materials & all deductable expenses & that will make it less for you in tax’.
2 ‘Fairweather: A Retrospective’ had opened to critical acclaim earlier that month.
3 Possibly ‘Bribie Artist Translates Old Chinese Novel…’, Courier-Mail, 19 June 1965.
4 Air India had created a series of humorous posters of a Maharajah, the airline’s mascot, travelling to different parts of the world. The Air India poster to which Fairweather refers is for travel to Paris: it shows the Maharajah character wearing a beret and holding open his overcoat to reveal images of himself, with the words ‘Pssst… Naughty Pictures!!’
244. To Treania Bennett
Bribie July1 14 [1965]
Dear Mrs Bennett.
Am sending down today three paintings Pool–Tortoise & Temple Gong–House by the Sea2
Am somewhat worried by the figures Miss Olley has sent–re income tax–I notice the cheques you have sent me dont cover costs of framing etc–Does this mean I still owe you for these?–Please let me know the worst–I would like to get things straightened out
Every one here seems pleased with the Retrospective So I am pleased–I suppose–though I shall not be sorry when it goes some other place–I found it a painful experience–
Whereas the Moscow Circus on the green near by was pure pleasure–and Valentina Sarakova3–has restored my belief in ART
The Drunken Buddha–Must really be a Holy Man he seems to have survived–
Cold beginning up here, but till now a wonderful warm winter–Hope it continues–
best wishes and regards Yrs Ian Fairweather
1 Macquarie Galleries annotated as ‘June ’65’.
2 Turtle and Temple Gong (1965) won the W. D. & H. O. Wills Art Prize, David Jones’ Art Gallery, Sydney 4–14 August 1965; House by the Sea has been dated by Bail as 1967–68, but this letter indicates it was created in 1965.
3 The Great Moscow Circus performed in Brisbane in March 1965. Valentina Sourkova is listed in the program as an ‘Artistic Aerialist’. She performed in the ‘costume of a snake’ in an act acclaimed ‘not only for its artistic quality but for its thrilling and dangerous aspects’.
