James Quinn

James Peter Quinn is recorded in the original catalog of the art competitions of the 1932 Los Angeles Games as British, but in fact he was an Australian who lived for a long time in London. In World War I Quinn was an official war artist who mostly painted prominent officers deployed in France. He studied at the Melbourne National Gallery School, and later in Paris at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux Arts. After the war Quinn was a council member of the London Portrait Society, and a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, exhibiting regularly with them and the Royal Academy, and in Paris with the Old and New salons. In 1935, he returned to Australia alone following the death of his much beloved and talented son René. In Australia, Quinn continued to exhibit with the Fine Art Society in Melbourne and the Royal South Australian Society of Arts.

The portrait of Steve Fairbairn (famous Cambridge Rowing Coach) was commissioned by Jesus College, Cambridge in 1926. There are probably other copies hanging in rowing clubs on the Thames. The portrait of Sir Hubert Wilkins (Arctic Explorer) was in the possession of the explorer’s widow after his death.