Roy de Maistre

This flower piece comes from de Maistre's period as an expetriate. In 1930 he left Australia permanently to settle in England. However, de Maistre had studied with Wakelin and Cossington Smith under dattilo Rubbo and Sydney modernist experiments survived in his style as an expatriate. He retained an interest in colour, pattern, interior decoration and design, focused on still lives and flower pieces as a subject matter in which it was possible to mediate between art and design. He liked to include decorative objects in his paintings and integrate his subjects into a whole interior. In this case, the orchids are echoed by a pot with matching pink flowers and the curly shapes of the iron railings. All are held together by a complex composition of diagonal and vertical architectural elements.

Naomi Horridge in The Song of the Lamb, The Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art, Wesfarmers Limited, Perth, 1989, p85