Ian Fairweather fans hail masterwork relaunch

One of reclusive artist Ian Fairweather’s most acclaimed paintings has re-emerged to be sold for the first time in half a century.

Tom Austin from Smith & Singer with Ian Fairweather’s Drunken Buddha masterwork On the Lake. Picture: Aaron Francis

For almost all his life, reclusive Australian painter Ian Fairweather lived alone, allowing the outside world only brief glimpses of himself. Now one of his most acclaimed paintings has re-emerged to be sold for the first time in half a century.

Fairweather, who was a POW during World War I, a guard at a POW camp in World War II, a seafarer and finally a hermit living in a grass hut on Bribie Island in Queensland, is one of our most revered and innovative artists whose reputation has continued to grow since his death in 1974.

It was in his primitive island shack where some of Fairweather’s most defining work came to life, including his Drunken Buddha masterwork On the Lake (1964). The painting will be for sale in Smith & Singer’s April auction of Important Australian & International Art for the first time since 1970.

“When an artwork that has been out of reach, almost in captivity, emerges, it sends a ripple of excitement throughout the industry among collectors and artists,” Smith & Singer chairman ­Geoffrey Smith said.

“He [Fairweather] was so detached and removed from the public acclaim … but when he held exhibitions, there were people sleeping on the street to queue up to buy his work.”

The painting is from a series of illustrations the Scottish-born artist crafted out of polymer paint and gouache on card and hardboard to accompany his translation of the well-known Chinese novel The Drunken Buddha. Based on the life of an eccentric and mischievous Buddhist monk, the artist’s version of the tale along with his paintings were published by Queensland University Press in 1965.

Almost 50 years after the artworks first left Bribie Island, the series was reunited when TarraWarra Museum of Art in Healesville, Victoria, presented the works in 2014.

“For many years no one knew where On the Lake was,” Mr Smith said.

“When it was included in the exhibition in 2014, it was such an incredibly exciting rediscovery.”

While the outline of a boatman rowing in the craft across the lake is the dominant feature, Mr Smith said the harmony between the “simple and straightforward against the unknown” makes the painting the finest example of Fairweather’s artistic practice.

“It has this naivety or simplicity but what lies beneath is very complex and ambiguous,” he said.

The estimated price for On the Lake is set at $200,000 to $300,000.

The auction will take place in Sydney on April 28.