Australian painter, active mainly in England. He was born at Bowral, New South Wales, and studied at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales and Sydney Art School. De Maistre also studied music at the Sydney Conservatorium and throughout his career he was interested in the analogy between colour combinations and musical harmony. This led him to early experiments with abstraction with Roland *Wakelin; they produced the earliest abstracts painted in Australia, but only one survives—de Maistre's Rhythmic Composition in Yellow Green Minor (1919, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney). Between 1923 and 1928 he lived in Europe, mainly France, and returned to Europe permanently in 1930, settling in London after a brief period of residence in France.
Text source: A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art (Oxford University Press)