Roy de Maistre - The Supper at Emmaus

Luke 24: 13–32

De Maistre shows Jesus, in a white gown, positioned centrally at the table with one of his disciples on the left and the other sitting at the side of the table. Jesus is breaking the bread and has an apple (or some other green fruit) in front of him. More fruit lie on a plate or bowl on the table. The disciples are portrayed just as recognition dawns on them that their companion is Jesus. The wounds, the nail hole in Jesus’ left hand and the wound of the spear in his side are clearly visible and confirm their realization. In 1959, the artist commented: ‘religion is not merely a subject for a painting but a perpetual reality which has preoccupied me ever since I remember and is inseparable for me from every other thought’.

Commentary based on A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection.

Born: Maryvale, Bowral, NSW, Australia,1894

Died: London, UK, 1968

Education

Roy de Maistre (born LeRoy Leveson Laurent Joseph de Mestre) studied at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales (1913-16) and Sydney Art School, Australia (1916). He was one of the pioneers of modern Australian painting.

Life and career

De Maistre studied music before serving as a medical orderly in the Australian Army Medical Corps during World War I. He obtained an early discharge due to physical weakness and debility caused by tuberculosis. His tuberculosis also prevented him from pursuing a career in music. His early interest in colour can be seen in his work with Charles Gordon Moffitt, a senior medical officer. This pioneered the use of colour (particularly on hospital walls and furniture) in psychiatric treatment for shell-shocked soldiers.

His early work explored the relationship between music and abstract art, collaborating with Roland Wakelin in Sydney around 1918-19 and culminating in the landmark Colour in Art exhibition of 1919. He devised a system linking the seven notes of the octave to the seven colours of the spectrum and developed charts, keyboards and colour wheels based on this. From 1923 to 1925 he travelled and worked in Europe, supported by a scholarship. He moved permanently from Australia to London in 1930.

Soon after arriving in London, he formed a friendship with the younger artist Francis Bacon which lasted for the rest of de Maistre’s life. At a time when homosexuality was illegal, de Maistre has been described as “a homosexual of extreme discretion” (David Ward quoted in Andrew Brighton’s Francis Bacon) and it is unlikely that he and Bacon were ever lovers. Although he undoubtedly helped Bacon to develop his technical skills as an artist, claims that de Maistre was “the man who taught Francis Bacon to paint” were denied by Bacon and belittled by de Maistre.

From the 1940s de Maistre developed a very personal style, combining elements from cubism and traditional realism. This style is seen in the two paintings in the Methodist Modern Art Collection. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1949 and soon gained a reputation as a major modernist religious painter. His commissions included The Stations of the Cross in the Great Corridor of Westminster Cathedral in 1953. The Supper at Emmaus in the Methodist Modern Art Collection may have been produced for a competition in 1958 to produce an altarpiece for the Chapel of St Edmund Hall in Oxford. The commission was given to Ceri Richards. His related sketch is also in the Methodist Modern Art Collection.

In a 1959 interview, de Maistre said that “religion is not merely a subject for a painting, but a perpetual reality which has preoccupied me ever since I remember and is inseparable for me from every other thought.”

De Maistre remained relatively unknown and impoverished. He depended on patrons such as the writer Patrick White and the prominent British politician Rab Butler and his wife, Sydney (nee Courtauld), whom de Maistre had met while they were honeymooning in Sydney in 1927. De Maistre was appointed a CBE in 1962. His funeral service and a requiem mass were held at London’s Brompton Oratory.

De Maistre had a range of solo exhibitions in both Sydney and London, including retrospective exhibitions in the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1960); and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1976). Group exhibitions included The Christian theme in contemporary arts in the International Faculty of Arts, Park Lane House, London (1953); and Artists serve the church in the Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry (1962).

His work is held in collections in Britain and Australia including Arts Council, London; Tate Gallery, London; Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral, London; Leeds City Art Gallery; National Gallery, Canberra; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. A companion work (painted in 1949) to the Methodist Modern Art Collection’s Noli me tangere is in the Art Gallery of New Norcia Benedictine Community near Perth, Australia.

David Buckman, Artists in Britain Since 1945: Volume 1 A to L. Vol. 1 of 2 volumes. (Bristol, Art Dictionaries Ltd, 2006), p. 1046-1047. The text is also available on the Art UK website: https://artuk.org/discover/artists/de-maistre-leroy-leveson-laurent-joseph-18941968 (viewed 18 September 2024)

Andrew Brighton, Francis Bacon (British Artists), (London, Tate Publishing, 2013)

Heather Johnson, ‘Maistre, LeRoy Leveson Laurent Joseph de [known as Roy de Maistre] (1894–1968),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008). The text is also available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/64519 (viewed 18 September 2024)

Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The Australian Years 1894-1930, (Roseville, New South Wales, Craftsman House, 1988)

Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years 1930-1968, (Roseville East, New South Wales, Craftsman House, 1995)

Seeing the Spiritual: A Guide to the Methodist Modern Art Collection. (Oxford, Methodist Modern Art Collection, 2018), p. 36-39

Roger Wollen, Catalogue of the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art with an Account of the Collection’s History, (Oxford, The Trustees of the Methodist Collection of Modern Christian Art, 2003), p. 60-65

Wikipedia, ‘Roy De Maistre’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_De_Maistre (viewed 18 September 2024)