Portrait of a Collector

James Fairfax was one of the nation’s greatest philanthropists, collectors and champions of Australian art.

Chairman of what was then known as John Fairfax Ltd, he put together one of the country’s most important collections of European Old Masters and was a generous benefactor to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

In this evocative biography his nephew, Alexander Gilly, pieces together Fairfax’s life through the prism of his art collection. Through a long-case clock built by Fairfax’s grandfather and given to his parents as a wedding gift, a painting by Rubens, a sculpture by Robert Klippel, a mural created for his country home by Donald Friend and other treasured objects, Gilly reveals the complex private and public lives of a man at the centre of a media dynasty. In conversation with Susan Wyndham.