...Maurice Collis had a long and unusual apprenticeship for an artist. He did not begin painting until the age of sixty seven, after a career as an Indian Civil Servant in Burma, and subsequently as a very successful writer and critic in London. His thirty or so books were translated into most of the languages of the world. His reviews of art and literature were innumerable.

Born and brought up in Ireland, where his father was a prosperous solicitor, he decided, on leaving Oxford, to join the Indian Civil Service. The unknown Orient appealed to his romantic and adventurous spirit far more than the family law firm which his father had hoped he would join. Also, the pay was very good and he had recently married.