Author: ANDREW GAYNOR
The French Australian Review 77 (Australian Summer 2024-2025): 35-58.
https://doi.org/10.62586/VGJL3741
Roy de Maistre (1894-1968) was one of Australia’s pioneer modernists for whom France was a constant and recurring source of inspiration and spiritual succour. This article traces his journeys to France starting from his first encounter in 1923 when the Basque coastal town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz became one of his most favoured locations. In 1930, he left Australia permanently travelling between France and England for some years before settling in London from 1937. Shortly after his arrival in May 1930, de Maistre met the the-twenty-year-old Francis Bacon (also a Francophile), becoming the young man’s first artist-mentor, a relationship which flourished during the 1930s. Whilst Bacon would go on to become one of Britain’s most significant post-war artists, de Maistre increasingly retreated to a private world of still lifes, portraits and religious imagery, all painted in an idiosyncratic form of decorative cubism. His final visit to France, in declining health, was in 1965. This article analyses de Maistre’s paintings created in response to his various French encounters and identifies the family and friends who supported these endeavours.
Keywords: Roy de Maistre, Francis Bacon, modernism, post-impressionism, cubism, ‘colour-music’
Purchase single article PDF AUD $5.50 inc GST where applicable