Two murals on the walls of James Fairfax's Bowral home encapsulated his two lives: one of duty, the other of adventure and artistic expression.
![James Fairfax, AC, at the handing over of his home, Retford Park, Bowral, to the National Trust in 2016.](/web/20170114194805im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/p/y/9/g/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtq01y.png/1484409257528.jpg)
The murals, painted by Donald Friend, are playful and more than a little cheeky, just as James would have expected when he commissioned them a few months after he bought the Bowral property, Retford Park, in 1964.
The smaller mural depicts the Fairfax family's history in Australia from the 19th century. While James himself is not pictured, his father, Sir Warwick Fairfax, is shown as a pensive Byronic figure being crowned with a laurel wreath. Warwick's wife, Lady Mary Fairfax, appears to be a woman in a hurry, holding a butterfly net.
The family members are intermingled with images of the Fairfax homes, among them Ginahgulla, the first Fairfax family residence in Sydney; Retford Park; James' beach house at Bilgola; and the triangular building on the corner of Pitt, O'Connell and Hunter streets that once housed John Fairfax and Sons.
The second mural indicates James' place as a pivotal and convivial figure within the artistic and social networks of Sydney.
One important element of the mural is a dinner party scene. The guests, each accompanied by their own thought balloon, include his friends, the artist Sidney Nolan; interior designer Leslie Walford; socialite Nola Dekyvere; the last private owner of the Darling Point mansion, Lindesay, Walter Pye; gallery owner Thelma Clune; Lady Lloyd Jones; her husband, Sir Charles Lloyd Jones, a patron of the arts and chairman of David Jones; and Donald Friend himself.
James had a talent for friendship. A good listener, an agreeable travel companion and a generous host, he made many friends and knew how to keep them.
![James Fairfax made numerous gifts to art galleries and was a regular benefactor for many organisations and charities ...](/web/20170114194805im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/p/x/r/s/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtq01y.png/1484409257528.jpg)
As the chairman of the media group then known as John Fairfax Ltd, he was, by necessity, more reserved. In a foreword to James' memoir, My Regards to Broadway, Max Suich, the former chief editorial executive of the company, described him as "a cultivated, thoughtful and tolerant man who listened to ideas and argument".
That tolerance, Suich wrote, "arose from a childhood of hurtful and puzzling parental conflicts and a painful adolescence. I judge that it came in particular from the necessary adjustments James had to make in his adult life both to live up to his inheritance and to live a full, creative life".
![James Fairfax retained a collection of classical European art, reputedly one of the finest in Australia.](/web/20170114194805im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/p/x/r/5/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtq01y.png/1484409257528.jpg)
The fifth generation of Fairfaxes to lead the company, James grew up in a wealthy and privileged family. He was the second child of Marcie Elizabeth (Betty) Fairfax, nee Wilson, and Warwick Oswald Fairfax, (later Sir Warwick), who was the company's managing director from 1930 then executive chairman from 1967 until 1977, when James took over the chairmanship.
With his parents and sister, Caroline, the young James lived in the Bellevue Hill home, Barford. The household was managed by 10 servants, including a gardener and chauffeur.
Every Christmas the family travelled in their Rolls-Royce to Palm Beach on Sydney's northern peninsula, a perfect playground for the vivacious and sociable Betty Fairfax, known as "Betty Fair" to her friends.
Betty was an extrovert, an elegant and charming hostess, while Warwick was the introvert, solemn and cerebral. He wrote three plays and books on mysticism, science, religion and philosophy, and spent much of his spare time on motoring and sport. He was also devoted to the theatre and dance. James thought his father "loved the idea of glamour and greasepaint and backstage life".
The first chapter of James' life came to an end when his father left the family home to move to a nearby residence and his mother fell in love with Pierre Gilly, captain of the French Navy destroyer, Le Triomphant, whom she met in 1942 when the warship was in Sydney.
Not long before his parents divorced, James was enrolled in Cranbrook School in Bellevue Hill where one of the teachers was the artist, Eric Wilson, who inspired him to appreciate art. A Paris street scene painted by Wilson was the first artwork James bought.
Early in 1946, he left the family home to board at Geelong Grammar School. Within a few months his mother married Gilly in Sydney, and immediately the couple left Australia to settle in Chungking (now Congqing), the headquarters of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, where Gilly was naval attache to the French military mission.
James' teenage years were, perhaps, the most difficult time in his life. With the absence of his mother and the challenges he faced at Geelong Grammar, James' only respite was school holiday time when he was supported by Hanne Anderson, who became his father's second wife. She gave James the warmth, sympathy, interest and courage he did not get from his father.
At the end of 1947, when James was still in his early teens, he travelled to Japan where he stayed with his mother and Gilly, who was then working at the French military mission in Tokyo.
James attributed his lifelong love of travel to this, his first overseas journey. The adventure also led to lifelong connection with Japan. One of his Sydney properties was a house with Japanese elements, among them a Zen garden, tall stands of bamboo, and a large Japanese screen. And in 1988 he began to write his memoir in the tranquil setting of a thatched-roof house in the mountain village of Koshihata.
If James' life could be dissected into home and away, home would usually mean work and, sometimes, family conflict, and away would represent the fun of travel and the companionship of good friends.
After graduating from Geelong Grammar, life at home was frustrating and unfruitful. James spent one year at the University of Sydney, where, he said, he "failed at everything" and was urged by his father to study at his alma mater, Balliol College at Oxford University, where Warwick had read philosophy, politics and economics.
James agreed, flying to England in 1952 to study for three years at Oxford. His academic life was pleasantly interrupted by his travels throughout England, to Paris (his mother and Gilly lived in the city from 1948), to Italy, Germany, Greece, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. His European journeys helped him expand his knowledge and love of art. In London, he met the writer, critic and gallery director Harry Tatlock Miller and Miller's lifelong partner, Loudon Sainthill. Miller was a partner at the Redfern Galleries in Mayfair, where James added to his art collection buying lithographs by Georges Rouault and Marc Chagall.
Graduating from Oxford with a master of arts, James had no need to decide on his future direction; he knew it was his destiny to join the family business in Australia.
In 1955 he began his 32-year career at John Fairfax Ltd (now Fairfax Media), starting as a trainee journalist under the supervision of John Pringle, the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.
He furthered his training in Scotland, where he spent eight months as a reporter and sub-editor at the Glasgow Herald.
Returning home to Sydney meant a new family drama. His father was soon to divorce Hanne for a new bride, Mary Symonds, nee Wein. Negotiating the divorce settlement with Hanne in London was Rupert Henderson, a key figure in the Fairfax company who was both a go-between and a protagonist who managed Warwick Fairfax and helped elevate James within the hierarchy of the Fairfax business.
In 1957, Henderson urged him to join the company's board and the following year he discussed with James the problems that the company was facing. Henderson suggested he take part in the editorial decision-making process including a daily discussion with Angus Maude, the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald from 1958.
By then, James was a director of Associated Newspapers (The Sun and Sungravure) and the Fairfax subsidiary, Amalgamated Television Services (ATN7), and was gradually building up his parcel of shares in Fairfax. Until 1959 James owned only 3 per cent of the issued capital, most of which had been transferred to him by his father.
But in 1960, through a complex rearrangement within the family holdings, James' own holding had more than trebled, reaching the same number of shares as those of Sir Vincent Fairfax, his father's cousin; and combined, the two men's holdings outnumbered that of Warwick.
In his early 30s, James had established a stable and happy personal life with frequent travel overseas and enough money to buy the artworks he admired and eventually two impressive properties, one in Bowral and the other in Darling Point, Sydney.
In James' business life, the 1970s was a pivotal decade. At first it seemed unlikely that he would take a major role in the company.
As the author, Gavin Souter, wrote in Company of Heralds, "some were inclined as late as the mid-70s to wonder whether James Fairfax's heart was entirely in the business … Unassuming as he was in manner, it would not have been surprising had he eventually devoted himself primarily to good works rather than hard work".
Nevertheless, there was a move within the company to elevate the next generation of Fairfaxes. Sir Vincent Fairfax believed that the time was right for James to succeed his father as chairman and Rupert Henderson thought it was more than time for Warwick to relinquish his executive authority.
Warwick resisted, but eventually retired on March 1, 1977. James chaired his first board meeting on March 17. As Souter wrote, he surprised the other directors with "his businesslike but consensual conduct of board meetings, and with his personal firmness on particular issues".
Summing up his years at the company, James told me in 1991 that he was happiest about the "establishment of relations between the management and board and its individual editors": "I was attempting to change the concept of personal control which Sir Warwick had, to a constitutional one – the right to be informed, advised and warned. Editorial independence is bandied about in so many ways now, you hardly know where it is, but it was in that area I felt I did achieve something which might have some permanent and lasting effect in this country. Maybe that's putting it way above what it deserves."
James planned to retire as chairman in February 1991 when he would have spent 35 years at the company, but his half-brother, Warwick, put an end to that with his foolhardy takeover bid in 1987. The timing could not have been worse, as the takeover attempt came just before the sharemarket crash in October that year.
The Fairfax family sold their shares, with James selling his for $164 million. This was $265 million less than he would have received if he had sold all his shares at the cash offer. James accepted the huge discount because, Gavin Souter explained, "as James saw it, he was simply abiding by the trust agreement which he had entered into at his father's request" some years previously.
James left the company in December 1987, and began a new life and direction allowing him much more freedom for writing, travel and expanding his art collection.
Known for his philanthropy, James made numerous gifts to art galleries and was a regular benefactor for many organisations and charities including libraries, hospitals, universities and the World Wide Fund for Nature.
He was a life governor of both the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Australia. The NGA houses the James O Fairfax Theatre, while the National Institute of Dramatic Art Playhouse has a James Fairfax foyer.
James donated old masters worth more than $30 million to the AGNSW, among them works by Tiepolo, Rubens, Ingres, Canaletto, Lorrain and Watteau, and both the AGNSW and Art Gallery of South Australia have acknowledged his gifts with galleries in his name.
His generosity was acknowledged in the Australia Day Honours in 2010 when he was awarded the Companion of the Order (AC) for "eminent service to the community through support and philanthropy for the visual arts, conservation organisations and building programs for medical research and educational facilities".
He retained a private art collection that included major paintings by Titian, Moroni, Ter Brugghen, Rubens, Solimena, Guardi and David as well as prints and drawings by Durer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Giambattista, Tiepolo, Delacroix and Gericault.
In 2016, James gave the Retford Park homestead, estimated to be worth $20 million, to the National Trust. The property is being preserved in perpetuity for the community, with funds for its upkeep coming from the neighbouring residential property developed when James subdivided part of the 120-hectare Retford Park estate.
Despite James' family status and wealth, he was inherently a modest and sometimes shy man. For his 80th birthday he invited 200 friends to his Retford Park home, where the party began with Louis Cristal champagne before lunch was served in a silk-lined marquee.
The event had been six months in the planning, with each room prepared to look the best it had ever been. But James did not make a grand entrance. Instead, a friend recalled, he was overcome with shyness and had to be persuaded to come downstairs from his bedroom and meet the guests.
The party turned out to be a great success, with James making an eloquent speech about his love of art and the love he had for his friends.
If tolerance was the gift he gave to his colleagues and employees, then generosity and loyalty were the gifts he gave to his friends. The gift he gave himself was a productive, adventurous and harmonious life.
He is survived by his half-brothers Warwick and Charles Fairfax, his half-sisters, Annalise Thomas and Anna Cleary, and his stepmother, Lady Mary Fairfax.