Ian Fairweather

Ian Fairweather (29 September 189120 May 1974) was a Scottish painter resident in Australia for much of his life. He combined Western and Asian influences in his work.

Life Ian Fairweather was born in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire, Scotland in 1891. His parents returned to India when he was a baby, leaving him in the care of a great-aunt, and he did not see them again until he was 10 years old. He received early schooling at Victoria College in Jersey, in London, and in Champéry, Switzerland, before attending officer training school at Belfast where his rank was second lieutenant.

He was captured by the Germans in the first days of World War I in France at the Battle of Mons and spent the next four years in prisoner-of-war camps. While captured, he was permitted to study drawing, Chinese and Japanese. He was responsible for the illustrations in many POW magazines. His four-year incarceration included lengthy periods of solitary confinement as a result of repeated escape attempts.

Fairweather's work was included in the exhibition "Australian Painting Today" at the Tate Gallery, London, and in the same year was selected to represent Australia at the São Paulo Art Biennial.

He is represented in all state galleries in Australia, the Tate Gallery, London, City Gallery, Leicester, and the Ulster Museum, Belfast. The only exhibition of his own works he ever saw was a 1964 retrospective at the Queensland Art Gallery.

In 1965 Fairweather published The Drunken Buddha which he had translated from the Chinese and illustrated with twelve of his paintings. It is a novel based on the life of Tao Chi whose eccentric approach to religious teaching was in accordance with an ancient and respected Chinese tradition of how a sage should behave.

Fairweather was interviewed in 1965 by Hazel de Berg on his life history. The interview can be found at the National Library of Australia.

Australian writer Murray Bail has written the monograph Fairweather (1981; revised edition 2009).

Ian Fairweather: A Life in Letters by Claire Roberts and John Thompson was published in October 2019 by Text Publishing.

In April 2019, Fairweather's painting Barbecue sold for $1.7 million.

QAGOMA (Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art) held the exhibition "Birds of Passage" from 2024 until January 2026, juxtaposing Fairweather with Paul Jacoulet.