Roland Shakespeare Wakelin was born in Greytown, New Zealand in 1887. He came to Australia in 1912 and died in Sydney in 1971.

He began his career as an impressionist painter, influenced by the works of E. Phillips Fox whose exhibition he saw soon after coming to Australia. Later he changed to a looser, broader style and could be regarded as the founder of Australian contemporary art and the modern movement in Sydney.

With his friend, Roy de Maistre, he held an exhibition of 'colour music' paintings in 1919, based on the supposed relationship of the colours of the spectrum and the notes of the musical scale.

In 1923 he went to London and Paris and saw the works of Van Gogh, Gaugin and Cezanne. These paintings clearly showed him the direction he wanted his own work to take. He returned home and continued his fight to have modernism recognised in Australia.