'Mother and Child' display, Fairweather Room, Gallery 11, QAG, installation views.
'Mother and Child'
2 December 2006 – 13 May 2007
The theme of the inaugural display is one of Fairweather’s most powerful and enduring — the relationship between mother and child. Fairweather was left in the care of relatives as an infant and was not reunited with his immediate family until he was ten. The extent to which this early life experience affected him has been much debated, speculation being fuelled by comments the artist made about his mother in later life and by his recurrent exploration of the maternal relationship. His early paintings on this theme — made in Bali, Peking and the Philippines, and influenced by his training at the Slade School, London — are lyrical expositions of familial harmony. Later works are more complex, and hint at an underlying antipathy.
List of works
Bathing scene, Bali 1933
Two nudes 1934
Outside the walls of Peking 1935
Palm Sunday 1951
Baby 1955
Composition 1955
Café tables 1957
Glasshouse Mountains 1958
Kite flying 1958
Epiphany 1962
