ROY DE MAISTRE

Dimitri Mitrinoviæ
Trustees of the New Atlantis Foundation
Glady MacDermot; thence by descent
Private collection, Switzerland

(possibly) The Burdekin House Exhibition, Burdekin House, Sydney, 8 October-21 December 1929

Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years 1930-1968, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1995, pp. 103, 106 (illus.)

The work is framed in a gold painted timber frame which appears to be original. There are fine vertical cracks throughout surface of the work which have resulted from the board used by the artist. These cracks all appear to be stable.
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Irish-Swedish Gladys MacDermot has been described as 'one of the most innovative and perceptive patrons of Australian modern art.'  She owned works by British modernists such as the Englishman Roger Fry and the Irishwoman Mainie Jellett, and provided intelligent and generous support to Roy de Maistre, Roland Wakelin and Grace Cossington Smith during her five years residence in Sydney, 1925-1929. When she returned to Europe she both maintained her commitment to de Maistre and extended that patronage to his young protégé Francis Bacon.

The present work was commissioned from de Maistre in 1927, and its strong abstract forms and tonal contrats, bright touches of colour and serried lines of feathery brushwork are typical of his post-impressionist style in this period. According to Gladys MacDermot's son Niall, 'the artist transposed the colour of an emerald green cloth that was covering the background table to the wall behind. This not only changes the emphasis of the painting from horizontal to vertical but also creates a diagonal tension between the vertical face of the arm of the chair and the background doorway. Niall MacDermot says too that de Maistre ignored the many pieces of fine furniture owned by his mother and chose instead to paint her old but favourite chair. The work is a comment on a personal space as well as an exploration of a technical one.' 

1.    Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years 1930-1968, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1995, p. 76
2.  ibid.,p. 103

We are most grateful to Heather Johnson, Andrew Brighton and Elizabeth Gertsakis for their assistance in cataloguing this work.