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Arthur BOYD 1920-1999

If you love Fine Art of impeccable provenance, the art you want is at Galeria Aniela

Arthur Merric Bloomfield BOYD AC OBE is Australia's most celebrated artist. In 1958 and 1988 Arthur Boyd represented Australia at the Venice Biennale. In 1988 Time Magazine commissioned Arthur Boyd to paint Earth-Fire as the cover for a special issue on environmental conservation in Australia. In 1992 Companion of the Order of Australia, 1995 Australian of the Year.

In 1997 Galeria Aniela Fine Art held the BOYD major exhibition comprising 100 paintings and 40 bronzes of Arthur Boyd, Guy Boyd, David Boyd, Jamie Boyd, Lenore Boyd, Tessa Perceval.

Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd is one of the top blue-chip artist, his Drowned Bridegroom sold for $1,952,000; Bride Running Away $1,680,000; Sleeping Bride $1,586,000.

Picture (1997): Arthur Boyd and Aniela

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Bride with the Necklace 

Oil on Board
Image Size
: 30 cm x 20 cm
Framed Size: 65 cm x 56 cm
 

 Enlarge

Price: Enquire

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Sleeping Bride 

 Oil on Board
Image size
: 71 cm x 51 cm
Framed size:

Enlarge

Price: Enquire

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Bride and the Serpent   VIDEO

Medium: Oil on Canvas
Image Size
: 122 x 94 cm
Framed Size: 150 x 122 cm

  Price: Enquire 

 Enlarge

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shoalhaven River 

Medium: Oil on Board
Image Size:
31 cm x 21 cm
Framed Size:
 65 cm x 56 cm

Price: Enquire  

 ENLARGE     Related Works

 
ARTHUR BOYD (1920-1999) Shoalhaven at Sunset c1976-78 oil on copper, 60.5 x 43.0 cm signed lower right: Arthur Boyd

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shoalhaven at Sunset
Medium: Oil on Copper
Image Size
: 60 cm x 45 cm
Framed Size:
95 cm x 80 cm
Price: SOLD

Click to Enlarge: Arthur Boyd, Shoalhaven Riverbank c.1970, Oil on Copper, 62 cm x  45 cm

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shoalhaven Escarpment 70
Medium: Oil on Copper
Image Size: 60 cm x 45 cm
Price: SOLD

Prices subject to change without a prior notice 

Click to Enlarge: Arthur Boyd (1920-1999), Shoalhaven River Escarpment c.1970-75, Oil on Board, 36 cm x 30 cm

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shoalhaven Escarpment 70
Medium:
Oil on Board
Image Size
:
36 x 31 cm
Price: SOLD

SOLD - Arthur Boyd, Shoalhaven at Sunset II, oil on copper, 30.5 x  22.5 cm

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shoalhaven at Dusk
Medium:
Oil on Copper
Image Size:
30 cm x 22 cm
Price: SOLD

 

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Campfire, Green Serpent, Bride

Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 100 x 82 cm
Price: SOLD 

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shoalhaven Cockatoos
Medium: Oil on Copper

Image Size: 3
6 cm x 30 cm
Price:  SOLD

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shoalhaven Black Swan

Medium: Oil on Board
Size: 38.5 cm x 32 cm
Price: SOLD

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Black
Swan, 3 Cockatoos

Medium: Oil on Board
Size: 38.5 cm x 32 cm
Price:
SOLD

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shoalhaven Black Swan, 2 Cockatoos
 
Medium: Oil on Board
Size: 38 cm x 32 cm
Price: SOLD

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shoalhaven, 3 Cockatoos
Medium: Oil on Board
Size: 38 cm x 32 cm
Price: SOLD

SOLD - Arthur Boyd, Shoalhaven Waterfall Bather and The Elder, Oil on canvas

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Woman bathing, Susanna and The Elder
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size:
75 x 62 cm
Price: SOLD

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shoalhaven
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 60 x 45 cm
Price: SOLD

 
SOLD - Arthur Boyd, Shoalhaven River Bundanon, Oil on canvas, 30.5 x 21.5

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shoalhaven River, Bundanon
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 30 cm x 20 cm
Price:
SOLD

SOLD - Arthur Boyd, Pulpit Rock (Shoalhaven) Oil on canvas, 82 x 82 cm

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Pulpit Rock
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 90 cm x 90 cm
Price: SOLD

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Red Rock, Magic Flute1990
Medium: Oil on canvas
Image: 147 cm x 154 cm
Price: SOLD

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Allegory Myth, Magic Flute
Medium: Oil on canvas
Image: 183 cm x 175 cm
Price:
SOLD

 
Arthur Boyd, Nebuchadnezzar Windmill, Oil on Board, Image Size: 21 x 25 cm

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Nebuchadnezzar Title: Windmill
Medium: Oil on Board
Image: 19 cm x 24 cm
Price: SOLD

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Title: Nebuchadnezzar on Fire
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Image: 19 cm x 24 cm
Price: SOLD

 

 Arthur BOYD
Black Pool the
Magic Flute
Medium: Oil on canvas
Image: 200 cm x 250 cm
Price: SOLD

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Title: Nude being Unveiled by Dog
Medium: Collage on Paper
Image
: 55 cm x 65 cm
Price: SOLD
 

 
SOLD -  Arthur Boyd, The Green Queen of the Night - Magic Flute, Oil on canvas, 200 x 250 cm

 Arthur BOYD
Queen of the Night Magic Flute
 Medium: Oil on canvas
Image: 200 cm x 250 cm

Price:
SOLD

SOLD - Arthur Boyd, Three Ladies Magic Flute, Oil on canvas, 200 x 250 cm

 Arthur BOYD
Three Ladies Magic Flute
Medium: Oil on canvas
Image: 200 cm x 250 cm
Price: SOLD

 

 

In 1958 Arthur BOYD "Brides" was exhibited for the 1st time at Australian Galleries.

In 2015 Arthur BOYD "Brides" were reunited at Heide Museum of Modern Art.

 

 Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Bride and groom by a Creek 1960
Oil on Canvas
Image size: 106.6 x 137 cm

National Gallery of Victoria

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Bridegroom drinking from creek II 1959
Oil, tempera on Canvas
Image size: 60.4 x 80.5 cm
State Art Collection
Art Gallery of Western Australia

 
    

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Dreaming Bridegroom II
Oil, tempera on Canvas
National Gallery of Australia reveals $8m of art masterpieces
National Gallery of Australia

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
 Persecuted Lovers 1958
Oil, tempera on Canvas
Image size: 137 x 182 cm

National Gallery of Australia 

 

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Bridegroom Drinking from a Creek 1958
New Walk Museum UK

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Bridegroom Drinking from a Creek II
PAC collection

 
 

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Reflected bride I
Oil, tempera on composition board

Image size: 122 x 91.4 cm
NGA
Purchased
1999 with funds from Nerissa Johnson Bequest National Gallery of Australia

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Shearers playing for a Bride
Oil, tempera on Canvas

150 x 175.7 cm
Gift from Tristan Buesst, 1958
NGV Collection
National Gallery of Victoria

 

         
Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Bride Drinking from a Creek 1960

Tate Gallery London UK

   
Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Arthur BOYD 1920-1999
Leda and the SwanBendigo Art Gallery
Bendigo Art Gallery collection
 

Since 1860 the BOYD family produced painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, and writers such as Emma Minnie ŕ Beckett,
Arthur Merric BOYD Senior, Theodore Penleigh, Martin ŕ Beckett, William Merric, Guy BOYD, Arthur
Merric Bloomfield BOYD known as Arthur BOYD, Jamie BOYD, David BOYD.

Jamie BOYD is the BOYD family most important living artist.
 

Marriage of John Perceval and Arthur's sister, Mary produced Tessa Perceval and Celia Perceval.
 

LEFT Drowned Bridegroom (1959) Oil and tempera on composition board, signed 'Arthur Boyd'

Arthur BOYD Brides Exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art

 

 


Arthur BOYD Brides Exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art

Arthur BOYD Brides Exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art

Arthur BOYD Brides Exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art

PHOTO Aniela with the BOYD family and friends.       PHOTO: (1997) Arthur BOYD and Aniela.
 

Arthur BOYD Brides Exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art
 

Arthur BOYD Brides Exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art
 

Since 1860 The BOYD family family produced many painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, and writers, starting with Emma Minnie ŕ Beckett and Arthur Merric BOYD, Theodore Penleigh, Martin ŕ Beckett, William Merric, Helen ŕ Beckett Read, William Merric, Lucy Gough, Guy BOYD, Arthur BOYD, David BOYD, Mary Elizabeth (married John Perceval children Matthew, Tessa Perceval, Celia Perceval & Alice are artists). Lady Nolan Mary married Sidney Nolan now a trustee of the Sidney Nolan Trust.  

Arthur BOYD and his wife Yvonne (née Lennie) children Polly, Lucy Jamie BOYD are also artists.

 

 

Auction Results

Under freedom of information we compiled relevant facts for you to enjoy. We believe in sharing the knowledge and express deep gratitude to the websites below in particular, and also to all Australian National galleries, Australian and International Press for information they share with us, without them our research would not be available. We hope you will enjoy the free services.

   

Price excl. GST

Details

$1,950,000

Drowned Bridegroom 1959, Oil and tempera on board, 122x182.8 cm, Sotheby's

$1,680,000

Bride Running Away 1957, Oil tempera on board, 91.5x121.5cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)

 ABC News Bride Running Away

$1,586,000 Sleeping Bride, Oil and tempera on canvas on board, 91.5 x 122 cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)

$1,200,000

The Frightened Bridegroom 1958, Oil and tempera on board, 61.7x63.5 cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)

$1,200,000

Dry Creek Bed 1953-1954, Oil, tempera and resin on board, 91.5x122 cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)

$1,057,500

Bridegroom Waiting for His Bride to Grow Up, Oil tempera on board, 137x182.9cm, Christies

$1,037,500 Phantom Bride 1958, Oil and tempera on board, .5x139.5cm, Deutscher~Menzies
$1,037,000 The Mourners, Oil on composition board, 84x100.5 cm, Bonhams
$960,000 Lovers by a Creek, Oil and tempera on composition board, 122x91.5 cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$954,000 The Dreaming Bridegoom, Oil and tempera on canvas, 122x152.5cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$900,000 Death of a Husband 1958, Oil on board, 91.5x122.5cm, Deutscher~Menzies
$833,000 Mourning Bride I, Oil on composition board, 121x175cm, Christies
$823,500 Bride in a Cup (1959), Oil on muslin on composition board, 90.5x120cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$732,000 Bridegroom Drinking from a Creek II, Oil and tempera on board, 60.4x80.5cm, Bonhams
$703,000 Bride Walking in a Creek I, Oil and tempera on composition board, 105.5x136.5cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$666,000 The Hunter , Oil and tempera on composition board, 132 x104cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$660,000 Man Ploughing a Field , Oil and tempera on plywood, 60x78cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$660,000 Bride and Bridegroom with Rainbow 1960, Oil and tempera on composition board, 91.5x122cm, Deutscher~Menzies
$585,600 Landscape with Waterhole and Herons, Near Alice Springs 1954, Oil tempera and resin on composition board, 91.5x122cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer),
$573,400 The Prodigal Son, 1946-47, Oil and tempera on casein ground on canvas, 101x121cm, Bonhams
$496,500 Bride Drinking from a Pool 1960, Tempera on composition board, 129.5x152.5cm, Deutscher~Menzies
$442,500 Wimmera Landscape, Oil and tempera on board, 72.4x95.2cm, Christies
$428,500 Bride in a Cave with Rainbow, Oil and tempera on composition board, 90x121cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$427,000 The Old Mine, C.1951, Oil and tempera on composition board, 91x121cm, Deutscher and Hackett
$417,272 Bride in the Moonlight (Bride Turning Into a Windmill), 1960, Oil and tempera on composition board, 91.5x122cm, Menzies
$410,727 The Little Train, 1950, Oil and tempera on composition board, 72.5x105.5cm, Menzies
$398,500 Abraham and the Angels , Oil on canvas, signed lower left, 90 x 120 cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$387,500 Bride Dreaming , Oil on board, 90x122cm, Christies
$378,000 Saul and David c. 1946, Oil on canvas on composition board, 91.5x96.5cm, Deutscher~Menzies
376,000 Bathers Shoalhaven Riverbank and Clouds, Oil on canvas, 259x305cm, Christies
$366,000 Shoalhaven River Bank (3 Rocks) (1983), Oil on canvas, 244.5x199cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$342,500 Berwick Landscape c. 1948, Oil on canvas on board, 60x80.5 cm, Deutscher~Menzies
$341,600 Train Crossing a River (First Version) (1980), Oil on canvas, 114x109cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer),
$336,000 Shoalhaven River 1976 , Oil on canvas, 99x91cm, Deutscher~Menzies
$335,500 Bride in the Moonlight (1960), Oil and tempera on composition board, 61x91cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer),
$330,000 Jacob's Dream, Tempera on board, 107x127cm, Christies
$317,200 Shoalhaven Landscape – Australian Scapegoat (1987), Oil on canvas, 243.5x198.5cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)

 

 

For more information please visit http://www.aasd.com.au/

http://www.artindex.com.au/        

 

Arthur BOYD Videos  

Video: ABC TV Australian National News 'Family Focus on Best of BOYD' Arthur BOYD, David BOYD, Jamie BOYD, Lenore BOYD, Guy BOYD, Tessa Perceval in Galeria Aniela exhibition open by Cameron O'Reilly NAG

VIDEO (gallery site): ABC TV Australian National News

VIDEO: ABC TV Sunday Afternoon with BOYD family exhibition in Galeria Aniela
 

VIDEO gallery site: ABC Sunday Afternoon, Review

VIDEO: Arthur BOYD auction video | Record price for Bride ... media.theage.com.au

VIDEO: Record price for Arthur BOYD painting smh.com.au

VIDEO: Record price for Arthur BOYD painting watoday.com

VIDEO : Arthur BOYD auction video | Record price for Bride ...media.watoday.com.au

VIDEO: Arthur BOYD auction video | Record price for Bride ...media.brisbanetimes.com.au

VIDEO: Arthur BOYD auction video | Record price for Bride ... media.canberratimes.com.au

VIDEO: Arthur BOYD explains why he paints with his hands: Figures in the Landscape - Documentaries

VIDEO: Arthur BOYD - A curator view of the artist trauma Figure and black rabbit Paintings in the studio

Tate lifts the veil on BOYD Bride |The Australian June 2010

9 News Current Affairs May 2007|  Arthur BOYD painting fetches an impressive $660,000

Tate London acquired Arthur BOYD first Bride at Ł250,000 June 2010 | London Telegraph

PHOTO: Hon. Bob Hawke (centre), Mrs Blanche D'Alpuget and Aniela

VIDEO: Hon. Bob Hawke AC, The Former Prime Minister of Australia (the longest serving ALP) talks about Australian Aboriginal art and Galeria Aniela

 

 

 

 

 


   


 

Arthur BOYD had a strong relationship with the Shoalhaven River landscape. The Shoalhaven River was the constant source of inspiration for BOYD's work.

From the 70’s BOYD painted landscapes on the Shoalhaven River. This resulted in a significant series of Shoalhaven paintings that are without doubt a key group of paintings in the history of Australian art and in BOYD's development as an artist.

 There is no precise number of BOYD's works in Shoalhaven series however each artwork based on the Shoalhaven River is absolutely unique.

In 1979 the ABC TV and BBC TV co-produced the television documentary film, built on Arthur BOYD life and Shoalhaven landscape. In 1979 the ABC TV and BBC TV co-produced the television documentary film, built on Arthur BOYD life and Shoalhaven landscape.

Rose Madder colour

Boyd used 'Rose Madder colour paint' that is one of the most expensive pigments as the plant cultivation was decreased from 1911. Available in Oils, Rose Madder is an excellent glazing pigment. This natural organic lake pigment was first used as a dye for fabrics as the evidence (of its us) can be found in ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian cloths as far back as 1500 BC. Cloth dyed with madder root pigment was even found in the tomb of Tutankhamun on Egyptian mummies.

Rose Madder is very distinctive rose coloured natural organic pigment is made from the roots of the madder plant, Rubia tinctorum. The pulverised roots can be dissolved in sulfuric acid, which leaves a dye called garance (the French name for madder) after drying. Another method of increasing the yield consisted of dissolving the roots in sulfuric acid after they had been used for dyeing. This produces a dye called garanceux. By treating the pulverized roots with alcohol, colorin was produced. It contained 40–50 times the amount of alizarin of the roots. The roots contain the acid ruberthyrin. By drying, fermenting or a treatment with acids, this is changed to sugar, alizarin and purpurin, which were first isolated by the French chemist Pierre Jean Robiquet in 1826. Purpurin is normally not coloured, but is red when dissolved in alkaline solutions. Mixed with clay and treated with alum and ammonia, it gives a brilliant red colourant (madder lake).

Considered one of the best quality natural pigments, it was well sought after and was brought to Europe by the crusaders. By the 13th century, it was being cultivated across Europe, notably in the Netherlands as their sandy soil provided a favourable environment for the plant. However, the production of madder dye was costly and by 1860, Great Britain was importing madder at the value of Ł1.25 million a year.

It was necessary to find a better, more reliable method making of the pigment. The renowned colourist George Field made extensive study of the madder plant and in 1804 discovered a more efficient process of extracting the dye and making a stronger, more vibrant pigment. William Winsor understood the importance of George Field’s research and acquired Fields’ notes and experiments following his death in 1854. These 10 volumes formed a basis of some of the colour recipes for the then newly founded Winsor & Newton Company.

The production of Rose Madder is still based on the recipes of George Fields, which Winsor & Newton have exclusive access to and remains a unique pigment with varying shades of rose, browns and purples that cannot be duplicated. Though alizarin (a dye derived from madder) was later synthesised in the 19th century making it far more affordable, the two colours should not be compared. Rose Madder retains a soft depth and richness unlike any other rose available. It is a transparent pigment with granulating properties.

Artists such as Arthur BOYD 1920-1999, Jan Vermeer 1632-1675, J. M. W. Turner 1775-1851, John Constable 1776-1837,William Holman Hunt OM 1827-1910 and James Abbott McNeill Whistler 1834-1903 have used the unique pigment to great effect.

Madder was employed medicinally in ancient civilizations and in the middle ages. John Gerard, in 1597, wrote of it as having been cultivated in many gardens in his day, and describes its many supposed virtues of pharmacological or therapeutic action which madder may possess. Its most remarkable physiological effect was found to be that of colouring red the bones of animals fed upon it, as also the claws and beaks of birds.

This appears to be due to the chemical affinity of calcium phosphate for the colouring matter. This property was used to enable physiologists to ascertain the manner in which bones develop, and the functions of the various types of cell found in growing bone.

   

 
Bride-Sleeping

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999

Sleeping Bride

Oil on Board, Signed lower right: Arthur Boyd

Image size: 71 x 51 cm

Provenance: The Boyd family

Price  subject to change without prior notice  Enquire 
 

Early Brides, painted 1957-1960 titled Love, Marriage and Death of a half-caste, consisted of about 30-40 paintings.

In 1970-90’s, Boyd executed a small number of Brides, signifying a new direction, departure from the sombre earlier series.

Although they are concerned with similar ideas, by contrast, the hauntingly beautiful Brides convey symbolic change, a sense of liberation, growth renewal and celebration of life.

The colours are typically Boyd - rich cerulean and ultramarine blues, deep ochres and golds, wonderful reds and creams create a subtle glow and delightful dazzling effect on the eye.

The Brides
is one of Boyd's most important series of paintings that firmly established his reputation as an artist nationally and internationally.

Bride Descending and Bride with the Necklace also Bride with the Serpent, convey reassuring change, liberation, growth, renewal and healing.


An influential art critic Bryan Robertson, said: ‘These paintings do not require any explanation. They speak with their own voice of something which the artist feels very passionately. They are …pictures, filled with an almost lurid… intensity of movement, stillness and colour.’ And it is just that: a deeply felt, deeply human.

The hauntingly beautiful Bride paintings are among Boyd's finest works. Brilliantly executed, Brides carry expression of human conscience with magical ambiance and a voice of understanding.

The ‘Brides’ is one of Boyd's most important series. Bride paintings have the presence at major museums art galleries including Tate Gallery London National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Gallery of NSW, confirming the stature of Arthur BOYD legacy in Australian and international art.


1993 ARTHUR AND YVONNE’S GIFT:
In 1993, on behalf of the Australian people, the Australian Government accepted the gift of Bundanon, and a parcel of other properties (1000 hectares in all) on the Shoalhaven River, from the Australian artist Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne.

1997 Best of BOYD Exhibition launch by Cameron O'Reilly Dep-Chairman NGA

1997 VIDEO the Australian National NEWS ABC TV at Galeria Aniela

1997 VIDEO the Australian National Sunday Afternoon ABC TV at Galeria Aniela

1997 BOYD exhibition coup the  Front page Sydney Morning Herald (17/05/1997)

In 1999 Arthur Boyd passed away, leaves it to us to wonder what the future holds. 

2015 Heide Museum of Modern Art presented an unprecedented opportunity to reunite some earlier Bride paintings from 1958 to 1960.

2022 Inspired by the cultural heritage of Boyd vision and his gift of the Bundanon Trust properties, a fine art gallery and museum was finally realised in 2022 with the opening of the Art Museum.

Bride Drinking from Shoalhaven River
\

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999

Bride with the Necklace over Shoalhaven River, Pulpit Rock 1970-75

Oil on Board

Signed lower right: Arthur BOYD

Image Size: 30.5 cm x 20.8 cm

Framed Size: 65 cm x 56 cm

Price subject to change without prior notice   Enquire 

 

The ‘Brides’ earned Boyd critical acclaim, is a milestone in the advancement of Australian modernism and its humanist themes, and is Boyd's one of most valuable series of paintings.


The ‘Bride’ series remains a highly important contribution to Australia's heritage, representing a defining achievement in Australian art of the 20th century and in the artist’s career.

 

The first Brides titled ‘Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste’ were exhibited at Melbourne’s Australian Galleries in 1958. The paintings were a response-allegory of Boyd's deep feelings after meeting indigenous Australians during his trip to Central Australia. The addition to Brides was exhibited in 1960 at Zwemmer Gallery, London.

 

The ideas Boyd introduced in the first Brides are the foundation of his work produced from that time onwards. The Bride series continued to provide Boyd with a rich source of inspiration. It became one of Boyd’s enduring themes, displaying a profound effect of Boyd's thinking and his love of the Australian landscape

 

Arthur Boyd's later Bride paintings such as Bride Descending, Bride with the Necklace and Bride with the Serpent, with its subtle glow, convey reassuring impending change, offering a sense of liberation, growth, renewal and healing.

The hauntingly beautiful Bride paintings are among Boyd's finest works. Brilliantly executed, Brides carry expression of human conscience, magical ambiance and a voice of understanding.

An influential art critic Bryan Robertson, said: ‘These paintings do not require any explanation. They speak with their own voice of something which the artist feels very passionately. They are …pictures, filled with an almost lurid… intensity of movement, stillness and colour.’ And it is just that: a deeply felt, deeply human.
 

The ‘Brides’ is one of Boyd's most important series. Bride paintings have the presence at major museums art galleries including Tate Gallery London National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Gallery of NSW, confirming the stature of Arthur BOYD legacy in Australian and international art.

 

ARTHUR AND YVONNE’S GIFT :
In 1993, on behalf of the Australian people, the Australian Government accepted the gift of Bundanon, and a parcel of other properties (1000 hectares in all) on the Shoalhaven River, from the Australian artist Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne.

1997 Best of BOYD Exhibition launch by Cameron O'Reilly Dep-Chairman NGA

1997 VIDEO the Australian National NEWS ABC TV at Galeria Aniela

1997 VIDEO the Australian National Sunday Afternoon ABC TV at Galeria Aniela

1997 BOYD exhibition coup the  Front page Sydney Morning Herald (17/05/1997)

In 1999 Arthur Boyd passed away, leaves it to us to wonder what the future holds. 

2015
Heide Museum of Modern Art presented an unprecedented opportunity to reunite some earlier Bride paintings from 1958 to 1960.

2022
Inspired by the cultural heritage of Boyd vision and his gift of the Bundanon Trust properties, a fine art gallery and museum was finally realised in 2022 with the opening of the Art Museum.

 

Related Works Small Bride

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999

Price excl. GST Image Size Details
$268,400 31 x 38 cm Bridegroom Waiting for Bride to Grow Up, Oil on board, Sotheby's
$244,000 25 x 30 cm Persecuted Lovers - Study, Oil on board, Bonhams
 

Arthur BOYD beautiful 'Bride' paintings are rare and among his finest, a beautiful powerful figure of BOYD imagery.

BOYD 'Brides' are in major public collections: Tate Gallery LondonNational Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia confirm the stature of Arthur BOYD legacy in Australian and international art.

Arthur BOYD, Bride Running Away, Sotheby's Sold for $1,680,000 (5/08/2012) and 'The Frightened Bridegroom' SOLD for: $1,200,000 (23/08/2011)

Arthur BOYD Bride with the Necklace drinking from the Shoalhaven River  is a master work, painted with great buoyancy circa 1970-75.

On the background of the Pulpit Rock ‘The Bride’ descends to Shoalhaven River to drink water.

The symbolism of water has a universal undertone of ‘purity and fertility’ and is often viewed as the source of life itself. Symbolically water means Transformation, Subconscious, Fertilization, Purification, Reflection, Intuition, Renewal, Blessing, Motion and Life.

The Bride, associated with love, beauty and fertility is wearing a 'Necklace'. The ‘necklace’ symbolizes the beauty and look of wealth.

Bride's Necklace is precious Jewels, symbolizing the GIFT that the artist donated to Australia.

Necklace believed to hold the power and resembles growth and new beginnings. But also, more spiritually, a Necklace stands for; nurturing and growth, awakening and positive change. Historically a necklace has cultural significance to commemorate ancestors and honour the stories.

The painting ’Bride with Necklace drinking from Shoalhaven River’ is characteristically BOYD painted with great attention to details and superb tone of colour and texture.

Arthur BOYD had a strong relationship between the landscape and the Shoalhaven River. The Shoalhaven River was the constant source of inspiration for Arthur BOYD's work. In 1993, Arthur BOYD gave his Bundanon estate on Shoalhaven River in NSW to the nation for the benefit of many.

 

Galeria Aniela presents an opportunity to purchase a museum-quality art of impeccable provenance the World Art Market offers to International and Australians collectors.

     

 

Bride and SerpentPlease Scroll Down for more details

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999

Bride and the Serpent

The Bride series is one of Boyd's most important series of paintings. Bride paintings have the presence at major public museums and galleries including Tate Gallery LondonNational Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Australia, confirming the stature of Arthur BOYD legacy in Australian and international art.

The hauntingly beautiful Bride paintings are among Boyd's finest works. Brilliantly executed, Brides carry expression of human conscience, magical ambiance and a voice of understanding.

Oil on Canvas, Signed lower right ARTHUR BOYD

Image Size: 122.5 cm x 93.5 cm

Framed Size: 150 x 122 cm

Price subject to change without a prior notice   Enquire 

Exhibited:

1995 film Australian National Nine Network TV Channel Nine, file: Bundanon Trust

1995 (televised 13-10) Burke of Burke's, Burke's Backyard and Australian National TV Channel Nine

1997 Galeria Aniela Best of BOYD Exhibition opened by Cameron O'Reilly Chairman NGA

1997 VIDEO the Australian National NEWS ABC TV at Galeria Aniela

1997 VIDEO the Australian National Sunday Afternoon ABC TV at Galeria Aniela

1997 BOYD exhibition coup the  Front page Sydney Morning Herald (17/05/1997)

2005 The Art Lounge Gallery, Sydney, Edmund Capon Director Art Gallery of New South Wales

 

The ‘Brides’ earned Boyd critical acclaim, is a milestone in the advancement of Australian modernism and its humanist themes, and is Boyd's one of most valuable series of paintings.


The ‘Bride’ series remains a highly important contribution to Australia's heritage, representing a defining achievement in Australian art of the 20th century and in the artist’s career.

 

The first Brides titled ‘Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste’ were exhibited at Melbourne’s Australian Galleries in 1958. The paintings were a response-allegory of Boyd's deep feelings after meeting indigenous Australians during his trip to Central Australia. The addition to Brides was exhibited in 1960 at Zwemmer Gallery, London.

 

The ideas Boyd introduced in the first Brides are the foundation of his work produced from that time onwards. The Bride series continued to provide Boyd with a rich source of inspiration. It became one of Boyd’s enduring themes, displaying a profound effect of Boyd's thinking and his love of the Australian landscape

 

Arthur Boyd's later Bride paintings such as Bride Descending, Bride with the Necklace and Bride with the Serpent, with its subtle glow, convey reassuring impending change, offering a sense of liberation, growth, renewal and healing.


An influential art critic Bryan Robertson, said: ‘These paintings do not require any explanation. They speak with their own voice of something which the artist feels very passionately. They are …pictures, filled with an almost lurid… intensity of movement, stillness and colour.’ And it is just that: a deeply felt, deeply human.
 

The ‘Brides’ is one of Boyd's most important series. Bride paintings have the presence at major museums art galleries including Tate Gallery London National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Gallery of NSW, confirming the stature of Arthur BOYD legacy in Australian and international art.
 

In 1993, on behalf of the Australian people, the Australian Government accepted the gift of Bundanon, and a parcel of other properties (1000 hectares in all) on the Shoalhaven River, from the Australian artist Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne.

1997 Best of BOYD Exhibition launch by Cameron O'Reilly Dep-Chairman NGA

1997 VIDEO the Australian National NEWS ABC TV at Galeria Aniela

1997 VIDEO the Australian National Sunday Afternoon ABC TV at Galeria Aniela

1997 BOYD exhibition coup the  Front page Sydney Morning Herald (17/05/1997)

In 1999 Arthur Boyd passed away, leaves it to us to wonder what the future holds. 

2015
Heide Museum of Modern Art presented an unprecedented opportunity to reunite some earlier Bride paintings from 1958 to 1960.

2022
Inspired by the cultural heritage of Boyd vision and his gift of the Bundanon Trust properties, a fine art gallery and museum was finally realised in 2022 with the opening of the Art Museum.

 

Related Works Bride

Price excl. GST

Details - Arthur BOYD 1920-1999

$1,950,000

Drowned Bridegroom 1959, Oil and tempera on board, 122x182.8 cm, Sotheby's

$1,680,000

Bride Running Away 1957, Oil tempera on board, 91.5x121.5cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)

 ABC News Bride Running Away

$1,586,000 Sleeping Bride, Oil and tempera on canvas on board, 91.5 x 122 cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)

$1,200,000

The Frightened Bridegroom 1958, Oil and tempera on board, 61.7x63.5 cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)

$1,057,500

Bridegroom Waiting for His Bride to Grow Up, Oil tempera on board, 137x182.9cm, Christies

$1,037,500 Phantom Bride 1958, Oil and tempera on board, .5x139.5cm, Deutscher~Menzies
$960,000 Lovers by a Creek, Oil and tempera on composition board, 122x91.5 cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$954,000 The Dreaming Bridegoom, Oil and tempera on canvas, 122x152.5cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$900,000 Death of a Husband 1958, Oil on board, 91.5x122.5cm, Deutscher~Menzies
$833,000 Mourning Bride I, Oil on composition board, 121x175cm, Christies
$823,500 Bride in a Cup (1959), Oil on muslin on composition board, 90.5x120cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$732,000 Bridegroom Drinking from a Creek II, Oil and tempera on board, 60.4x80.5cm, Bonhams
$703,000 Bride Walking in a Creek I, Oil and tempera on composition board, 105.5x136.5cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$666,000 The Hunter, Oil and tempera on composition board, 132 x104cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$660,000 Bride and Bridegroom with Rainbow 1960, Oil and tempera on composition board, 91.5x122cm, Deutscher~Menzies
$496,500 Bride Drinking from a Pool 1960, Tempera on composition board, 129.5x152.5cm, Deutscher~Menzies
$428,500 Bride in a Cave with Rainbow, Oil and tempera on composition board, 90x121cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
$417,272 Bride in the Moonlight (Bride Turning Into a Windmill), 1960, Oil and tempera on composition board, 91.5x122cm, Menzies
$335,500 Bride in the Moonlight (1960), Oil and tempera on composition board, 61x91cm, Sotheby's Australia (now trading as Smith & Singer)
   

The Bride series

Arthur Boyd's series 'Love, Marriage and Death of a Half Caste', is known as 'the Brides', was first painted between 1957 and 1960 after Boyd travelled to Central Australia. Boyd added few 'Bride' paintings later on...  however, Boyd had changed emphasis with more attention to the landscape - 'the Bride in the landscape'.

The Bride series of paintings represents a defining achievement in both the artist's career and in Australian art of the twentieth century.

In 1951 30-year-old Arthur BOYD travelled to Central Australia where he witnessed the strained relationships between indigenous Australians and white Australians. In Persecuted lovers, a painting from the series Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste 1957–58 a rifleman takes aim on two lovers with silent murderous anticipation.

In 1957, Arthur BOYD developed his first series of Bride images, known more formally as Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-caste. The early works in the series had as their focus the relationship between Australia's white and indigenous occupants.

By the 1960s, however, this earlier political emphasis had changed: BOYD's attention was fixed more on the subject of the bride in the landscape.

In his 1960s images, BOYD frequently combined the motif of a bride drinking from a river with another favoured visual trope "the diagonally plunging figure with the bridal gown flared-out and bell-shaped there is a play with the poetic ambivalence of metaphoric associations: the drinking bride is insect-like, as is the washing figure, not spider now but rather dragonfly or butterfly, a white bridal insect lost and watched in wild solitude." (F. Phillipp, Arthur BOYD, London, 1967, p.100).

The bride's appearance in Bride on the Shoalhaven is reminiscent of these works from the 1960s, particularly Bride Drinking from a Pool. Nevertheless, in Bride on the Shoalhaven, painted in the mid-1980s, the wild solitude of BOYD's 1960s landscape has lightened, becoming less embedding of the figure it surrounds: a shift perhaps prompted by BOYD's acquisition of his beloved Bundanon.

The artist first visited Bundanon, a property located on the Shoalhaven River on the south coast of New South Wales, in 1971. BOYD felt an immediate affinity with the area and in 1973 purchased the nearby property of Riversdale, subsequently acquiring Bundanon in 1979.

The canvas follows a format familiar to BOYD's Shoalhaven paintings of the mid-1970s, with the surface broken up into horizontal bands containing cobalt blue sky, the steep slope of the riverbank and the river. The disparate elements are linked by both the textural application of the paint, as well as the immense figure of the bride, who swoops, bird-like, into the water. Her vertical movement is replicated by the trunks of the trees, which divide the canvas by stripes of white, grey and taupe.

 

Bride with her Lover exemplifies the artist's new-found expressiveness, taking the theme of the Bride, which originated in the late 1950s as a symbol of his horror at the living conditions of Aboriginal Australians, and transforming her into a universal figure. In the case of Bride with her Lover, the universality of the Bride seems, as in a related work Double Nude II "to have grown out of the (ex-) half-caste lovers of 1960: bared of clothes as of the last vestiges of the original 'story' the united lovers have turned into a 'joined figure' - to use a BOYDian title- suggestive perhaps of the bisexual oneness of the platonic myth, but stated with characteristic literalness. The spectrum of meaning may run from love-death, the re-entering of an eternal cycle, to narcissistic doom." (F. Philipp, Arthur BOYD, London, 1967, p.96).

The eternality of the scene is not only to be found in the symbiotic melding of the two central figures, but also their dissolution into the surrounding landscape. The groom's body is given substance only through his eyes, the fingers of his left hand, and a swathe of black curls, highlighted with sweeps of white paint, which tumble around his face. Otherwise, his body disappears into the forest floor, made insubstantial below and hidden from above by the bride's wedding gown and veil. Although given greater substance, the bride, too, melds into the forest, white swathes of paint in her veil turning to the blue of the background hill, her skirt dissolving into the trees on the left. A crow observes the couple from a tree, a reminder again of the eternal cycle of love and death.

 

When Arthur BOYD visited the desert regions of Central Australia in 1951, he could hardly have imagined that paintings resulting from that experience would, within the decade, be shown in a London gallery; purchased by Australian, British and American collectors; and become the basis of his international recognition. His work is now represented in the Australian national and all state galleries and his 'Bride' series, which includes Bride walking in a Creek I, is ranked among his greatest achievements.

Born in 1920 in Melbourne, into a dynasty of artists, Arthur BOYD enrolled intermittently at the National Gallery of Victoria's art school during the 1930s, he learnt primarily from his family and their wider intellectual circle in Melbourne: painting techniques, art history, biblical history and an intense emotional engagement with news brought from Europe by immigrant friends.

Arthur BOYD was deeply moved by stories of displacement and dispossession. Austrian-born fellow artist Josl Bergner had fled pre-War Europe in 1937. The art historian Franz Philipp, an early supporter of BOYD's work, arrived in Australia aboard the prison ship Dunera: one of over 2000 German and Austrian interns sent from Britain in 1940. BOYD himself served briefly and unhappily in the Australian army during the Second World War.

Then, as his biographer Barry Pearce explains, BOYD found in the Aboriginal settlements near Alice Springs, in Central Australia, a race of displaced people, caught between two cultures, 'and the implication in it of something universal'. He saw and sketched shanty towns, shearers, tribes people, and witnessed an Aboriginal marriage with 'half-caste' women dressed in wedding gowns.

   

Although profoundly dismayed by the plight of the Aboriginal people he met in the Northern Territor and aware that this was a contemporary tragedy unknown to most urban Australians, BOYD was not known in making a social-realist record. Rather, he took the idea of a half-caste groom wooing a half-caste bride, worked it into a series of large scale paintings and constructed a kind of ballad or a 'passion play about the tribulations associated with the pursuit of love'.

 

Initially, Arthur BOYD Bride series of paintings was titled 'Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste'.

Boyd's 'Love, Marriage and Death of a Half Caste, known as 'the Brides', represents a defining achievement in both the artist's career and in Australian art of the twentieth century.

In the first paintings, exhibited in 1958 at Australian Galleries in Melbourne, there is clear reference to the arid landscape around Alice Springs. Floating figures, posies of flowers and a blue-faced Aboriginal groomsman deliberately call Chagall to mind. However, here in Bride walking in a Creek I, the background is more verdant, the pigments densely worked into a setting for a haunting dream of love and loss.

BOYD included Bride walking in a Creek in the now iconic 1959 exhibition of the 'Antipodeans': the manifesto of Melbourne's leading young artists upholding figurative expressionism in avant-garde art. This was also one of the paintings BOYD took with him when he and his family sailed for Europe at the end of that year and was included in his first London one-man show at the Zwemmer Gallery.

Clearly BOYD's composition owes something to Rembrandt's Woman bathing in a Stream of 1654 in the London National Gallery. In the calm after the storm of the war years, BOYD had turned to the Old Masters for inspiration, researching traditional techniques in publications such as The Materials of the Artist and their Use in Painting by Max Doerner (1934).

 

By 1959, BOYD had studied important paintings by Rembrandt at the Gallery in Melbourne but knew A woman bathing in a stream only in reproduction. Indeed he painted a copy from a reproduction in the mid 1940s; as well as two versions of Susanna and the Elders, one of these a mural completed in 1948-9 for the dining room of his uncle Martin BOYD's country house.

Where Rembrandt depicted his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels wading in a stream and evoking variously a mythological Diana or a biblical Susanna or Bathsheba, BOYD's wading woman is clearly Australian. In surviving photographs of his Susanna mural, sadly now destroyed, the trees hanging over the water are eucalyptus. 

Similarly, BOYD's bride is walking, with her Rembrandtesque garment lifted, in a distinctly antipodean 'creek' - reminiscent of the upper reaches of the Yarra River. In the words of Franz Philipp, 'Rembrandt the humanist, the moral, psychological and poetic interpreter of the Bible and, in it, of mankind, appealed to a painter of strong humane and moral convictions'. 

However, rather than mere homage, there is a note of affectionate irony in BOYD's relationship with the art of the past. BOYD's reference to Susanna in Bride walking in a Creek is more overt than Rembrandt's in A woman bathing in a stream, for he includes a dark profile-head watching from the foreground (somewhat reminiscent of the profiled Elder in Rembrandt's earlier Susanna and the Elders, 1647, in the Berlin Gem'ldegalerie).

Yet BOYD's approach to the theme is entirely his own. Just as the apocryphal Susanna innocently aroused sexual desire in old men who spied on and then falsely accused her, so BOYD's Bride seems oblivious of the observer in the bush.  In BOYD's Bride paintings the blue-shaded face is often accompanied by another watcher - the slightly ominous but apparently benign black crow. 

Although there is a powerful underlying eroticism in this work, the theme of BOYD's Bride series, more than anything else, is humanity's suspension between worlds. 'The half-caste's dilemma was between what we have and what we want; what we are and what we fear'.  Arthur BOYD's art at its greatest is both intensely personal and profoundly universal.

Bride walking in a Creek is one of very few major paintings from this iconic series to have remained, 'undiscovered' in the collection of its first owner's family for almost fifty years. Barry Pearce, Arthur BOYD, retrospective, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1993, pp. 20-21. . (2) Franz Philipp, Arthur BOYD, Thames & Hudson, London, 1967, p. 45. . (3) Pearce, op. cit., p. 21.

 

About Arthur BOYD Bride series - NOTES from Christies

Arthur BOYD's Bride series has rightfully earned a canonical place in Australian art history, due to its powerful picotrialisation of issues of social justice, rendered in a poetic style that blends figuration with an abstracted surrealism. It has been suggested that "The Bride series constitutes, together with Nolan's two series on Burke and Wils and Ned Kelly, the most powerful visual images to emerge from Australian painting... in this century." (U Hoff, The Art of Arthur BOYD, London, 1986, p.22.)

The original title of the series was 'Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste', a title that was deliberately ambiguous. Rather than presenting a simplistic symbolism of a longed for union between white and black Australia, BOYD avoided a reductive simplification of the racial issues by making both the bride and bridegroom half-caste. The complexity of the narrative relations was deepened by the doubling of the bride figure in the form of an impossible phantom bride, who is the object of a dream-like desire that is destined to remain forever unfulfilled.

Through the cycle of missed gazes that is the emotional core of this painting, BOYD evoked unfulfilled longing and a sense of isolation within the compositional embrace of the figures, in the process transposing contemporary social issues into poetic and painterly allegory. Although this work is undeniably one of the more gentle images from the series, the central theme of the Bride paintings is the dream of integration through love, an ideal which is stripped of its romanticism by the culture of racism and violence that is the fundamental reason preventing the lovers from union. BOYD first became aware of the plight of the indigenous Australians when he visited the Simpson Desert in Central Australia in 1951.

In Arthur BOYD's extant sketchbooks and recorded reminiscences from the 1951 journey, he records seeing Aborigines and half-castes "...living in squalor in shanty towns, whorlies and dry riverbeds." (Hoff, op.cit, p.49.) BOYD himself commented that "They are forced into this position and it has a serious effect on you, when you are not used to it... You suddenly come against it after imagining that they are noble savage types living in the bush..." (A BOYD cited in F Philipp, op.cit. pp.84-86.)

Since the time of colonisation, Aboriginals had been the subject of many works of art by artists and continued to be depicted in the art of BOYD's contemporaries such as Russell Drysdale. Common to all of these works however, was either an idealisation of Aboriginal culture or their portrayal in an isolated landscape devoid of social context.

With the Bride series, BOYD became the first Australian artist to represent indigenous Australian within a cross-cultural social context, thereby confronting the deep divisions that exist between white and black Australia. The blonde curls, white face and straight nose (a hallmark of European physiognomy) of the bride contrasts strongly with the bearded, pug-nosed face of her bridegroom. Although she too is half-caste, for her thwarted suitor she remains the symbol of an unobtainable union with white Australia.

The bridegroom is represented in his usual watchful pose, with knees drawn up and an inscrutable expression on his face; a pose that Philipp interpreted as that of "the dreamer".

 

BOYD's engagement with art historical precedents is also evident in this work which contains allusions to Chagall.

Philipp noted that: "The following paintings are pitched in a less substantial and coller mode, with tenebrous blues and greens dominating.

Bridegroom waiting for his Bride to grow up, on of the highest poetic realizations of the series, is also a key picture. Moving towards a more severe style, it still lacks the frozenness and textural austerity of the monumental group: the paint is scumbled in the blue posy-tree and the veil of the phantom bride's head which emerges from it.

This painting more than any other suggests to me an awareness of Chagall. BOYD fully masters the kinetics of his marionettes, which seem suspended from one fulcrum of gravity: their startled and obsessed stance and movement, their all-eye stare, the click of their non-relations." (F Philipp, op.cit, p.92.) The half-caste bridegroom, his transitional cultural status made evident through his European dress and bare feet, wears a suit directly derived from the bridegroom in Chagall's floating wedding pictures.

 

Situated within a stark and denuded landscape that further emphasizes the pathos of the displacement of the Aborigines, he is now incongrous in his native landscape. It is the subtle representation of this final indignity that freed Australian art from depictions of indigenous Australians as 'noble savages' and allowed a modern political conscience into our artistic culture.

The recurring motif of weightlessness sees the bride being constantly pulled away from her beloved by an unseen force that contradicts gravity. In all of the Bride pictures there is a repetition of something, or someone, being trodden on: in 'Bridegroom waiting for his Bride to grow up', the bridegroom treads on her train and holds the posy-tree between his toes. As Franz Philipp noted: "BOYD's ballad, then, is a dream play: the half-caste girl... turns into the 'white bride' who cannot grow up (i,e, become real...) Always she remains in a dream which the dreamer tries to retain, to hold with his clumsy physical weight by stepping on the bridal train or by sitting on it... (Philipp, op.cit, p.88.)

Such subtle compositional devices act as eloquent truths about the nature of inherited burdens, which, once understood, are all the more forcible for being cloaked in allegory. BOYD's use of tempera mixed with oil results in a beguiling translucency that adds to the dreamlike quality of the painting and is particularly evident in the face of the bride. The painting is an essay in texture with the scumbled areas of subtle colour contrasting with the smooth finish evident in areas such as the bridegroom's jacket which in turn gives way to the impasto used in the flowers.

 

BOYD brilliantly used materials and technique to underscore the narrative and composition of the work as may be seen in the denser paint evident in the endearingly ungainly figure of the bridegroom. His solidity is in marked contrast to the thinly layered paint used to represent both of the brides and which contributes to the sense of their ethereality.

The significance of the Bride series was evident from the advent of its first exhibition and led to solo shows for BOYD in Australia and a retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. With the Bride series, Hoff concluded "BOYD ceases to be precocious and achieves both absolute originality and complete maturity; these paintings are, I believe, the watershed of his art and without them he could not have done some of the notable later series." (U Hoff, op.cit., p.22.)

Turning allegory into a weapon for social awareness, BOYD simultaneously highlighted his sophistication as an artist while portraying the deeper complexities of a social problem that continues to confront a psychologically post-colonial Australi. The series of which this painting is an integral part will always be ranked as one of the pre-eminent contributions to Australia's pictorial history.

 

Arthur BOYD white Bride searches for her lost aboriginal groom in a fantastic landscape inhabited by predatory birds. Marriage between aboriginals and white women was a taboo subject in Australia in 1948. She hovers above her lost lover whose body is half immersed in the creek. Threatening birds hop dangerously close, the nearer with a large red penetratingly-observant eye. Perhaps the birds represent a disapproving populace ready to pounce if things get too far out of hand. Misty landscape features blur the coalescence of the figures and threatening clouds add to our sense of foreboding.

BOYD's place as one of Australia's most significant painters of the 20th century, was based on a prodigious talent and effervescent, if often bleak, imagination. In 1959, the BOYD family moved to London. His first London exhibition (Zwemmer Galleries, July-Aug 1960), comprising the bride series on the theme of thwarted lovers, was a prelude to his representation in the Whitechapel and Tate Gallery exhibitions, 1961,62.

By the mid-1970's he had gifted several thousand works to the NGA and in 1973, he and Yvonne BOYD purchased a house and property, Riverdale, at Shoalhaven, on the south coast of NSW, followed a few years later by the nearby Bundanon, both of these properties they gave to the nation in 1993. Several feature films have been made on his work and in 1993, Barry Pearce curated a major retrospective of his paintings, prints, drawings and ceramics for the AGNSW, which toured to other state galleries in 1994. His work has been included in every major touring exhibition of Australian art since the mid 1970s.

Awards: Dunlop Prizes, Melb., 1950, 52; Kuringai, NSW Prize, 1958; Henry Casselli Richards Prize, Brisb, 1963; Brittanica Australia Award, 1971; artist-in-residence, ANU, 1970-72; AO, 1979; AC, 1992; Australian of the year 1995.

Reference: McCulloch, A., McCulloch, S., McCulloch Childs, E., The New McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art, (4th edition), The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2006, pp.274.
 

Encapsulating the heroic and poetic in an Antipodean tragedy of thwarted lovers, Arthur BOYD’s ‘Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste’ series 1954–59 is universally considered among his finest. Thus, upon his arrival in London shortly after completion of the landmark series for which he had won so much acclaim, BOYD did not immediately abandon this hauntingly beautiful theme but rather, began to develop the imagery further – transforming his nubile bride from the wide-eyed, flat-footed innocent with all her earthly physicality to the sylph-like nymph featured here whose ephemeral presence hovers insect-like above the lush, wooded landscape.

Rare and highly sought-after, the small group of paintings resulting from such experimentation and exemplified by Landscape with Bride, Ram and Waterfall, moreover heralded significant thematic and stylistic shifts in the artist’s oeuvre that would culminate in his ‘mythological’ paintings of the late 1960s.

Profoundly influenced by the great masterpieces of Renaissance art which were now so readily accessible in Europe’s vast collections, these later Bride paintings poignantly illustrate the artist’s predilection for eclecticism at its extreme. Merging his previous interpretations of the theme with literary references to classical mythology and his predecessors’ pictorial meditations upon the destinies of Eros, BOYD here creates his own highly personal, erotic symbolism; as Rosenthal elucidates, ‘In many pictures, the fantasy has a basis in metamorphosis, as in Nude Turning into Dragonfly or Bride Turning into a Windmill.

In others, BOYD displays his enduring habit of eclectic borrowing – for example, the fruitful left breast from Tintoretto’s Origin of the Milky Way or the mournful, seated dog from Piero di Cosimo’s picture of the satyr mourning a dead girl.’1 All are nevertheless distinguished from BOYD’s previous work by a more sophisticated painterly technique in which the relative flatness of the picture surface is exchanged for a heavier impasto style featuring thick streaks of paint carefully worked with a knife or brush-handle akin to the vigour of contemporary expressionism.

A superb example of this later series, Landscape with Bride, Ram and Waterfall features the chief protagonist portrayed as a dark, hovering, half-transparent phantom, the white halo of her veil forming a full circle recalling the blades of a turning windmill while below, the burning, consuming passion of her lover emerges from the darkness of the primeval forest. In its themes of allurement and the threat of unknown depths, the work evokes unmistakable associations with the myth of Narcissus, while stylistically the motif of the flaming bushland prefigures the artist’s fiery explorations of the Old Testament Nebuchadnezzar theme. Like the best of BOYD’s achievements, the present work offers a highly idiosyncratic composition, of multiple meaning and quenching thirst, and redolent with the energy of drama.

Rosenthal, T., ‘Introduction’ in Hoff, U., The Art of Arthur BOYD, Andre Deutsche, London, 1986, pp. 22–3.

Credits: Christies, - Arthur BOYD, Bride with her lover - 2005, 22 August

 

In the painted world of Arthur BOYD's imagining, "people are suspended between worlds, or states of being, between the pitiless forces of nature and the god-like grace of being human, between hostility and serenity, participation and voyeurism, love and lust and so on" (B. Pearce, "Arthur BOYD", Australian Painters of the Twentieth Century, Sydney, 2000, p.149). BOYD moved with his family to London late in 1959. There, his exposure to the works of Piero di Cosimo and Titian broadened the artist's horizons, enabling him to tap into a wellspring of mythological and symbolic currents that would continue to shape his art for the rest of his life.

This attraction to the mythological did not distract BOYD from the course he had set as an artist during the previous thirty years in Australia: rather, it would imbue much of his art from this time on with a dramatic darkness and resonance.

Bride with her Lover exemplifies the artist's new-found expressiveness, taking the theme of the Bride, which originated in the late 1950s as a symbol of his horror at the living conditions of Aboriginal Australians, and transforming her into a universal figure.

In the case of Bride with her Lover, the universality of the Bride seems, as in a related work Double Nude II "to have grown out of the (ex-) half-caste lovers of 1960: bared of clothes as of the last vestiges of the original 'story' the united lovers have turned into a 'joined figure' - to use a BOYDian title- suggestive perhaps of the bisexual oneness of the platonic myth, but stated with characteristic literalness.

The spectrum of meaning may run from love-death, the re-entering of an eternal cycle, to narcissistic doom." (F. Philipp, Arthur BOYD, London, 1967, p.96). The eternality of the scene is not only to be found in the symbiotic melding of the two central figures, but also their dissolution into the surrounding landscape.

The groom's body is given substance only through his eyes, the fingers of his left hand, and a swathe of black curls, highlighted with sweeps of white paint, which tumble around his face. Otherwise, his body disappears into the forest floor, made insubstantial below and hidden from above by the bride's wedding gown and veil.

Although given greater substance, the bride, too, melds into the forest, white swathes of paint in her veil turning to the blue of the background hill, her skirt dissolving into the trees on the left. A crow observes the couple from a tree, a reminder again of the eternal cycle of love and death.

   

 

Shoalhaven River with Clouds Framed-The Shoalhaven River-1980
 

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999

Shoalhaven River Escarpment with Trees and Clouds (1980) 

Signed Lower right:  'ARTHUR BOYD'

Medium: Oil on Board 

Image size: 31 cm x 21 cm

Framed size: 65 cm x 56 cm

Price subject to change without a prior notice  Enquire

 

Related Works River with Clouds

Since the 70’s Arthur BOYD has painted landscapes on the Shoalhaven River. BOYD had a strong relationship with the Shoalhaven River landscape. The Shoalhaven River was the constant source of inspiration for his work. This resulted in a significant series of paintings that are without doubt a key group of paintings in the history of Australian art and in BOYD's development as an artist. Each artwork based on the Shoalhaven River is unique. In 1979 the ABC TV and BBC TV co-produced the television documentary film, built on Arthur BOYD life and Shoalhaven landscape. In 1993 Arthur BOYD donated his beloved home Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River to Australian people.

 

Arthur BOYD 1920-1999                                                                     Price excluding GST

 

Shoalhaven Riverbank
Shoalhaven Riverbank

Oil on composition board, signed Arthur Boyd

29.5 x 24 cm

Est: $30,000-40,000, Deutscher and Hackett, Important Fine Art + Indigenous Art, Sydney, 18/04/2018, Lot No. 17

$73,200

 

       

Evening, Shoalhaven River

Evening, Shoalhaven River Oil on composition board, signed 'Arthur Boyd'

30 x 19.5 cm

Est: $25,000-35,000, Smith & Singer, Important Australian & International Art, Sydney, 24/06/2020, Lot No. 1

$71,182

 

       

Blackbirds Over Shoalhaven Riverbank c. 1985

Oil on board, signed Arthur Boyd

35 x 28 cm

Est: $45,000-55,000, Joel Fine Art, Australian & International Art, Melbourne, 14/08/2007, Lot No. 44

$59,090

 

       

Shoalhaven River with Wading Bird and Cockatoos (Circa 1979-1980)

Oil on board, signed 'Arthur Boyd'

30 x 19.5 cm

Est: $30,000-40,000, Smith & Singer, Important Australian & International Art, Sydney, 02/09/2020, Lot No. 1

$52,773

 

       

Shoalhaven Riverbank

Oil on board, signed 'Arthur Boyd'

20 x 15 cm

Est: $18,000-25,000, Sotheby's, Russell Crowe: The Art of Divorce (Art lots only), Sydney, 07/04/2018, Lot No. 98

 

$46,360

 
       

Shady Riverbank - Shoalhaven

Oil on composition board, signed 'Arthur Boyd'

30 x 38 cm

Est: $20,000-30,000, Sotheby's, Important Australian Art, Sydney, 24/11/2015, Lot No. 19

 

$46,360

 
       

Shoalhaven Riverbank, Crane and Cockatoos

Oil on board, signed 'Arthur Boyd'

30 x 19.7 cm

Est: $20,000-30,000, Sotheby's, Important Australian Art, Sydney, 23/11/2010, Lot No. 1

$40,800

 

       

Shoalhaven Riverbank,

Oil on composition board, signed Arthur Boyd

30.5 x 20 cm

Est: $25,000-35,000, Deutscher and Hackett, Australian & International Fine Art, Melbourne, 29/08/2007, Lot No. 29

$40,800

 

       

   

 
 

Painting Oil on Copper

ABOUT Oil on copper painting

Since 1700's oil-on-copper-plate has been used by artists with stunning results. Painting Oil-on-copper plate allows superior clarity and brilliance of colour and is called archival with a smooth surface assures archival quality. Unlike canvas or board, a copper plate must be properly prepared. Painting oil on copper exposes artists to number of challenges for that reason contemporary artists seldom use oil-on-copper-plate painting technique.

A master painter Arthur BOYD 1920-1999 exhibited oil-on-copper paintings in Australian Galleries Melbourne (1976) and at Fischer Fine Art London (1977). Now these exquisite oil-on-copper are highly priced rare gems, keenly sought after by the World Art market collectors.

How to prepare copper plate for painting with oils

 1. Glue the back of the Copper Plate.
To prepare copper plate as an archival surface, the artist first cut a solid substrate to glue to the back of the copper plate. This will prevent bending, denting or any other major movement that would cause the painting to crack. The artist must choose flat, medium-density fiberboard and cut it to just under the size of the copper plate.

2. Roughen the Back of the Copper Plate.
The artists sands the backside of the copper plate with coarse sandpaper or scratch grooves into the metal. This roughening helps the glue adhere to the surface while keeping the protective plastic on the front of the copper plate.

3. Remove Dust from the Copper Plate.
To further ensure a good bond, the artist cleans off the sanded backside of the copper with denatured alcohol.

5. Tape the Copper Plate to the Substrate.
To ensure a good bond between the surfaces the artist tape the board to the copper.

 6. Apply Weight to Copper the Plate.
To ensure that the backing does not slip to one side or the other while drying.
The artist must not come in contact with the copper plate.

7. Seal.
When the glue has set, the artists seals the MDF with a wood sealer to prevent warping or other damage from water penetration.

8. Sand and Clean the Copper Plate.
The artists removes the plastic protection from the front of the copper plate and, while wearing a particle dust mask and nitrile gloves, sand the surface with fine-grit sandpaper, taking great care to sand the entire surface thoroughly. If the artist wants a beveled edge on the copper plate, he sands the edges of the plate with a file or a block wrapped in sand paper. Once the sanding is completed, the artist cleans the surface with denatured alcohol and a clean cotton rag or paper towels. The artists keep clean nitrile gloves on during this process to ensure that the oils of your skin.

9. Prepare the Copper Plate.
Once the surface is clean, the artist may remove the particle dust mask and take the plate into the studio. Then the artist cut a clove of garlic and rub it’s juice onto the painting surface or use a brush to apply a thin layer of pure garlic juice onto the surface. Usually several garlic cloves are required and a razor blade on a plate nearby so, after covering a few square inches, the artist can slice or reslice a clove for fresh garlic juice. The garlic juice etches the surface of the copper and allows for a chemical bond to the lead in your primer and/or the lead in white; this is in addition to the mechanical bond that sanding alone would provide.

10. Paint on the Prepared Copper Plate. The artist may paint on the freshly dried, garlic-juice-rubbed copper surface right away with pure oil paint or apply primer to create a silky smooth white surface for paint application. Artist use lead white either when priming the surface of the copper or in the initial layers of the painting because the lead in the paint will chemically bond to the copper, further ensuring that the paint will have good adhesion to the surface.
If painting directly onto the copper plate, artist covers all areas with paint as exposed copper will eventually change color.
Then again,
painting on Copper helps reflecting the colour from the underlying copper surface giving colours brilliant intensity of glowing light and its brilliance and making it heightened.

How to Prime a Copper Plate.

Priming is traditional when painting on copper plate. To do this, the artist applies two coats of very thin lead-based oil primer to the surface. The artist must keep these layers smooth and thin by rubbing on a small amount of the lead primer with the gloved palm of your hand. If artist wish for a smoother surface, after the primer is dry, can carefully wet sand the surface with oil and fine-grit sandpaper.

challenges archival oil-on-copper-plate painting technique

Smooth slippery surface

Flexing of the metal

An unwavering brush

Humidity

Quickly drying paint

must have a variety of brushes of both natural and synthetic fibers

Copper plate must be properly prepared - a smooth, archival oil-painting surface has been used by artists for hundreds of years with stunning results.

RETURN to Shoalhaven at Sunset

   

 

NOTES Shoalhaven Escarpment and Shoalhaven at Sunset 1976-78

Arthur Boyd 90th Birthday -  Google Logo Boyd-inspired "Shoalhaven at Sunset" , 24 July 2010Shoalhaven at Sunset Google
BOYD was honored by Google. Inspired by his 'Shoalhaven at Sunset' Google reworked the company's logo The Age, 24 July 2010 / Rose Madder

 

After ten years in Europe where he built his international profile as a figurative modernist Australian artist, Arthur BOYD and his family returned to Australia and purchased the famous property at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River in 1978.

From that point on, he set about painting the immense power of the formidable river landscape –  the strength of the land, the river in flood, the passage of twilight, and the almost heraldic image of Pulpit Rock –  generally imbued with allegorical narratives of the human condition.

 

Shoalhaven at Sunset c1975-78 is a jewel-like early Oil on Copper (from the period of the artist greatest artistic acclaim), painted with the colours of the oil paint reflected from an underlying copper surface, giving it the brilliance.

This makes the sunset colours seem heightened, more sensual, but that would be for any viewer who had not been to the Shoalhaven and experienced the intensity of light over the river at sunset. BOYD captures a deeply spiritual experience philosophically tied to notions of sustainability: he strove lifelong for the preservation of the bush landscape for future generations. BOYD’s sunset image shows a white cockatoo coming alive, turning, squawking, descending, as day turns to night. It twists high above the basalt layers of the riverbank.

It is here that the river gums stand above the waterline, straining for water in days of endless drought. BOYD marks his belief in the sustainability of this environment with a foreground triangular structure of rocks and trees, like a strong abiding haven for the descending cockatoo. Professor Peter James Smith BSc (Hons); Msc; M Stats; MFA; Phd. November 3, 2013

 

In 1993 Arthur BOYD has given his beloved home Bundanon and properties on the Shoalhaven River to Australian people. Arthur and Yvonne BOYD's gift of the Bundanon properties and collections has given Australia a unique cultural and environmental asset.

The gift was borne out of Arthur BOYD's often stated belief that 'you can't own a landscape' and the deeply felt wish that others might also draw inspiration from Bundanon.

Gifted to the Australian people in 1993 by Arthur and Yvonne BOYD the Bundanon property (which includes the Bundanon Homestead site and the Riversdale site) is located on 1,100 hectares of pristine bush land overlooking the Shoalhaven River,  in NSW, near Galeria Aniela gallery, two and a half hours south of Sydney.

 
 

Arthur BOYD Shoalhaven Series of paintings

PHOTO 1995: ARTHUR BOYD and Aniela

Transcending social issues and cultural commentary, Arthur BOYD created series of paintings that are without doubt a key group of paintings in the history of Australian art and in Arthur BOYD's development as an artist.

Arthur BOYD produced a number of eminent series of paintings including Shoalhaven River, Wimmera landscape, Nebuchadnezzar  and Bride series.

Arthur BOYD paintings have been recognized as outstanding contributions to the Australian art of the 20th century.

BOYD's ‘Brides’ paintings were reunited at Melbourne's Heide Museum. In this regard comparable to Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series or Marc Chagall ‘Love and Dream’ series.

In 1978, Arthur and Yvonne BOYD purchased properties and settled permanently at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River.

In 1979 ABC TV and BBC TV co-produced the television documentary film, A Man of Two Worlds, based on BOYD's life and work.
Over the years, Arthur BOYD painted landscape scenes of the Shoalhaven River and the surrounding bushland.

This resulted in one of the most significant series of ‘Shoalhaven River’ paintings that are not simply landscapes but rather, a fusion of BOYD's European and Australian backgrounds.

Each painting based on the Shoalhaven River in the series is absolutely unique. The precise number of Arthur BOYD paintings produced in the series is unknown nonetheless every painting in each individual series is unquestionably unique.

During the latter part of BOYD's painting career, BOYD landscape works were based on the Shoalhaven River, the series most prized by the public.  

 

   

About Shoalhaven series 

At the beginning of 1975 Arthur BOYD return to Australia from England, lived for a year on the banks of the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales. The paintings in this collection were conceived during that year.

During the 70's Arthur BOYD exhibited Shoalhaven series small paintings at Australian Galleries and Fischer Fine Art London. Fischer went on to become one of the founders of Malborough Fine Art in 1946. These oils are now rare highly priced gems, keenly sought after by Australian and international collectors on the World Art market.

In 1978, Arthur BOYD permanently settled at his home on the Shoalhaven River, named Bundanon. Over the years, Arthur BOYD befriended the formidable landscape, painting scenes of the Shoalhaven River and the surrounding bushland. In a second part of BOYD's painting career from the late 70’s, BOYD landscape works were based mostly on the Shoalhaven River. This resulted in a significant series of paintings that are expression of Arthur BOYD love for Australian landscape.

Shoalhaven paintings are not simply landscapes but a fusion of Australian history and the key in the artist development. The ABC TV & BBC TV co-produced the documentary film, A Man of Two Worlds, based on BOYD's life and work.

In 1993, Arthur BOYD gave to the people of Australia the family properties comprising 1,100 hectares (2,700 acres) at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River.

The imagery of landscape echoes BOYD Bride pictures and the subsequent Diana and Actaeon series of 1961.

Some of the paintings continue early themes such as Bride drinking from a Creek, Bride with the Necklace Drinking Shoalhaven River and later the last BOYD's Bride Bride with the Serpent.

In the 70's, the wake of the paintings on copper BOYD created Shoalhaven at Sunset, Shoalhaven River Escarpment which literally fixed the Shoalhaven landscape in all its minute detail.

BOYD began, with the ongoing stimulus of Porter's poetry, to introduce the moral narrative to the set.

At the same time, in 1976, BOYD work on the Shoalhaven landscape, with its riverbank and reflecting pools under Pulpit Rock.

In 1984 Arthur and Yvonne BOYD left London to Australia and, more specifically, to their property Bundanon, on the Shoalhaven River. However BOYD's joy at re-discovering the Australian landscape was tempered with a distressing awareness of the careless treatment of the natural environment by reckless and hedonistic visitors.

BOYD was a practical environmentalist who, together with Sidney Nolan, had fought to stop sand-dredging near Riversdale on the Shoalhaven in 1981.

The artist is recorded as saying: "I think Australians have been apt to believe that because this was such a vast land, they couldn't make a mark on it.

But a mark has been made and if it continues at this rate, it will soon be too late..." (Arthur BOYD, cited in J McKenzie, Arthur BOYD Art & Life, London, 2000, p.169).

Thus while the subject matter of BOYD's Bather series followed a long established western art historical tradition, BOYD's rendering of this theme was imbued with both personal and contemporary environmental concerns, as Hoff noted in the following extract:

"BOYD in bathers, which had not occupied him since the early fifties was revived by Cézanne's Bathers in the London, National Gallery. The idyllic and secluded beach, far from the city, which Conder and Streeton had made popular, is replaced by the beach in the technological age. Cars and speedboats, raucous cries of a hedonistic mob break the calm of nature. What BOYD owes to Cézanne is the considered build-up of the figures into a frieze composition. The stunning effect of the huge painting rests on the contrast between hot tints, large forms of a crowd and the beauty of the natural world. Above the garish human turmoil rises the impressive, timeless riverbank. Luminous cumulus clouds scud across the deep blue sky. "

To quote Elwyn Lynn, "the work is the epitome of the creative continuity of Arthur BOYD's art." (U Hoff, op.cit, p.81). Curtsey: Sotheby's catalogue, 23 April 2007.

 

Historic BOYD exhibition in Galeria Aniela

    

 

Biography Arthur Merric Bloomfield BOYD 1920-1999


PHOTO 1943 : Arthur Boyd (left) and John Perceval at the Boyd's Murrumbeena property.

Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd AC OBE, a leading Australian painter of the middle to late 20th century, is one of Australia's most prominent artists.

Boyd work is highly respected and traded in major international art venues and held in public galleries throughout Australia and overseas.

In 1958 Arthur Boyd represented Australia at the Venice Biennale and twice again 1988 and 2000.

Boyd has been awarded the H G Richards Memorial Prize, 1963, honoured with the Order of Australia for services to the arts and the Companion to the Order of Australia. Boyd is also an accomplished sculptor and ceramist and was responsible for the design of the tapestry in the reception hall at Parliament House, Canberra.


 

AUSTRALIAN PAINTER, POTTER, AND PRINTMAKER

Born: July 24, 1920 - Murrumbeena, Victoria, Australia

Died: April 24, 1999 - Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 

Arthur Boyd left school at fourteen to work in his uncle's paint factory. The following year Arthur Boyd attended classes at the National Gallery School in Melbourne while there he painted portraits of his siblings and self-portraits. Boyd also fell under the influence of the Jewish immigrant artist Yosl Bergner who introduced Boyd to novelists such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Franz Kafka; writers who would help shape his humanitarian worldview.

When Arthur Boyd was sixteen, he moved in with his paternal grandfather on the Mornington Peninsula at Rosebud. Under Arthur Snr's guidance,

Boyd developed his skills by focusing on portraiture and seascapes of Port Phillip. He enjoyed exploring the nearby bay and creeks by boat, and constructed a cart so that he could carry painting supplies behind his bicycle.

Around the time of the outbreak of the WWII, Arthur Boyd moved to Melbourne where he met a number of European refugees and Australian nationals whose physical disabilities barred them from joining the war service. These displaced, desolate and tortured souls would occupy many of Boyd's paintings.

In 1941 Boyd was conscripted to serve with the Cartographic Unit, he produced several paintings that, according to the artist Sue Smith, were "painful images of the dispossessed and the outcast".

On 6 March 1945 Boyd married fellow painter Yvonne Lennie whom he had met while in military service. They lived at Open Country, and Arthur's first studio was built in the grounds there from a modernist design by his cousin, Robin Boyd. Soon after, Boyd, John Perceval (his brother in law) and Peter Herbst founded the Arthur Merric Boyd Pottery Workshop at Murrumbeena where he and his colleagues turned their attentions to pottery, ceramic decoration, and sculpture.

Meanwhile, Arthur Boyd created a series of paintings, including two of his best known, The Mourners and The Expulsion that drew on biblical narratives of human cruelty as a way of broaching the theme of horror and suffering in war.

Arthur Boyd liked to touch the paint, using his hands and fingers to manipulate his oils; like a potter would shape his or her clay. Indeed, Boyd disliked being called an "artist" and dismissed it as a "phoney romantic" ideal when he saw himself rather as "a painter [...] a tradesman".

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Arthur Boyd travelled throughout the Wimmera countryside of Victoria and Central Australia, devoting his energies to landscape painting.

In 1951 Arthur Boyd visited Alice Springs where he met Aborigines for the 1st time and was shocked at their near destitute living conditions.

This experience initiated his series of 31 paintings Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-caste (also known as The Bride) which represented the Aboriginal figure of mixed descent as a maltreated outcast. Exhibited in 1958 in Melbourne, The Bride series caused considerable controversy.

Arthur Boyd later said: "I'd like to feel that through my work there is a possibility of making a contribution to a social progression or enlightenment"

During this time, Boyd also formed close friendships with members of the modernist Heide Circle of artists. These included Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and Sidney Nolan, and the art patrons John and Sunday Reed.

Arthur Boyd, however, maintained a cool distance from the group and its hierarchical structure, preferring to root his artistic identity in the Boyd family. Nevertheless, he felt an allegiance with the Heide artists' commitment to Figurative Modernism as opposed to the fashion amongst many modernists for abstraction.

In 1958, Arthur Boyd, with fellow Australian landscape painter Arthur Streeton, represented Australia at the Venice Biennale. Boyd again represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1988 and 2000.  

The following year, in 1959, Arthur Boyd became affiliated with a newly founded group of Melbourne-based artists (Charles Blackman, David Boyd, John Brack, Robert Dickerson, John Perceval, and Clifton Pugh) who called themselves the Antipodeans, and who, like the Heide circle of artists, worked to promote figurative painting.

In 1959, a year after the death of his father, Boyd and his family relocated to London where they lived until 1971. The move, which coincided with the Antipodeans exhibition at the Whitechapel gallery, saw Boyd earn a living by designing sets for the ballets and operas, and by producing etchings and ceramic paintings.

In 1966, Boyd made his only trip to Paris, along with fellow Australians Sidney Nolan and Barry Humphries, to view a major Picasso exhibition. Boyd made frequent trips to London's National Gallery where he became captivated by the works of Poussin, Veronese, Tintoretto, Piero di Cosimo, and Rubens, as well as other Venetian, Sienese and Florentine painters. During a trip to Venice, meanwhile, he fell in love with the works of Giorgione.

The art critic Bryan Robertson noted that, "Some aspects of Arthur Boyd's painting could be said to have been marginally affected by American art, notably Abstract Expressionism, but Boyd's allegiances were as direct to European art as his roots were in the splendid Australian impressionism".

Arthur Boyd's years in England had in fact marked a more intense focus on Australian subjects and landscapes. The eminent English art historian and museum director Kenneth Clark was one of the first European collectors to support Boyd, purchasing one of his paintings of the Australian outback. Boyd's stay in London was capped off in 1970 when he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to the arts. 

In 1971, Boyd and his family returned to Australia, eventually settling at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales where he continued to paint landscapes.

In 1975, Boyd was awarded a Creative Arts Fellowship from the Australian National University and donated several thousand works including pastels, sculptures, ceramics, etchings, tapestries, paintings and drawings, to the National Gallery of Australia.

In 1976, Boyd was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to the visual arts. Around the time that his son, Jamie, came of age for military service, Boyd signed a petition protesting against Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War.

1978 -Although he would continue to return periodically to England (always by boat, as he feared flying), Boyd and his wife Yvonne settled permanently on the Shoalhaven River, where they purchased two properties at Bundanon and Riversdale.

Boyd built additions onto the pre-existing buildings at both sites to extend the homes and created new studio spaces. The rugged scenery surrounding the Shoalhaven River inspired many of his later landscape paintings.

In 1979, the ABC and BBC TV networks co-produced a documentary film, A Man of Two Worlds, based on Boyd's life and work. In the early 1980s, he protested against sand mining on the Shoalhaven River, one of Australia's greatest natural assets.

Around that time, he was made an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Melbourne and in 1982 he donated his family villa in Paretaio, Tuscany to the Australia Council's artist-in-residence program.

This gesture was followed by his so-called Australian Scapegoat series. Featuring violent imagery and archetypes associated Australian military history (to once more condemn the futility of war) Boyd explored constructions of Australian identity in the lead up to the bicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1988.

In 1988, Arthur Boyd was commission by Time Magazine to paint Earth and Fire as the cover for a special issue about environmental conservation in Australia.

In 1992 Arthur Boyd was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia.

In 1993, the Art Gallery of New South Wales held Arthur Boyd major retrospective.

In 1995, Prime Minister Paul Keating named Boyd "Australian of the year" in recognition of his contribution to Australian art, and his philanthropic work.

 

In 1997, Galeria Aniela Fine Art held the Boyd family major exhibition 'The Best of Boyd' comprising 100 paintings and 40 Boyd's bronze sculptures by Arthur Boyd, Guy Boyd, David Boyd, Jamie Boyd, Lenore Boyd and Tessa Perceval.

 


In 1998,
the Australia Post produced a series of stamps featuring Arthur Boyd photograph and images of Boyd's works.

 

 

 

 

In 2010,Arthur Boyd 90th Birthday -  Google Logo Boyd-inspired "Shoalhaven at Sunset" , 24 July 2010
Arthur BOYD was honored by Google. Inspired by his 'Shoalhaven at Sunset' Google reworked the company's logo The Age, 24 July 2010

 

 

In February 1999, aged seventy-eight, Arthur Boyd suffered a heart attack during a return journey from England.

Arthur Boyd recovered from his heart attack and was released from hospital, however he suffered a second, fatal, heart attack on 24 April 1999.

Arthur Boyd was survived by Yvonne and their children, Jamie, Polly, and Lucy who all continued to work as artists.

 

The Legacy of Arthur Boyd

According to Edmond Capon, the Director Art Gallery of New South Wales, "Few Australian artists have cast their vision across so broad a landscape of ideas and traditions, both real and mythological, as Arthur Boyd and few have sustained their creative powers with such force and energy". His landscapes, biblical allegories, and other works, many of which foreground the wild beauty of the Australian wilderness, served as a model for subsequent generations of Australian artists. Most notably, through his involvement with the Heide circle of artists, and the Antipodeans, he participated in the promotion of figurative art at a time when abstraction was dominating the art market, inspiring other Australian artists, like Piers Maxwell Dudley-Bateman, Robert Dickerson, and John Brack, to do the same.

Moreover, Boyd's commitment to foregrounding humanitarian and social issues in his works gave his art a deeper, more universal value. In this way, he connected art with everyday life and pressing issues relevant to each historical moment he lived through. Curator Barry Pearce notes that Boyd struggled with the demands of the commercial art market, stating that "he found it very hard being enslaved to the collectors [and] was constantly riven with anxiety". Despite his reservations, however, John Neylon summed his importance to Australian modernism when he wrote: "Along with others of his generation ([Sidney]Nolan et al) Boyd represented, for aspiring young artists in the 1960s, a model of what art should be about - defiantly different to all the Australian art that had gone before. When Nolan populated his 'Australian' landscapes with mytho-poetic figures, emerging local artists were inspired. Boyd also fuelled this hunger for new, creative narratives about Europism Down Under. But he was, and remains, remarkably different".

 

Boyd's work ranges from impressionist renderings of Australian landscape to starkly expressionist figuration, and many canvases feature both.

Arthur Boyd was born into a family of artistic renown. Arthur Boyd’s grandparents Emma Minnie (nee a’Beckett) and Arthur Merric Boyd were both accomplished and recognised artists, exhibiting at the Royal Academy in London and in various galleries in Melbourne. Arthur Merric was a traditional landscape painter affiliated with the Heidelberg school.  

Arthur Boyd grandfather, Arthur Merric Boyd was a New Zealand landscape artist who settled in Australia in 1886,while his grandmother Emma Minnie, a member of the A'Beckett family, was an accomplished painter. Both paternal grandparents exhibited at the Royal Academy, London and Arthur Merric taught his grandson the skill of landscape painting in the Heidelberg tradition. Boyd learnt ceramic art from his father, Merric Boyd while family life revolved around art and religion.

At the age of 17 he held his first exhibited at the Seddon Gallery in Melbourne. He was soon to move away from the light-toned, blue and gold palette style of the Heidelberg School to a darker palette using freer more expressive brush strokes. In the early forties Boyd came under the influence of social realist, Yosl Bergner, and took painting lessons from Danila Vassilieff, an expressionist artist. He was an active member of the Angry Penguins and shared a studio with John Perceval. The paintings of this time already exhibited a Boyd characteristic: tension experienced on margins, such as the boundary of sex/love, love/loathing.

In 1945 Boyd studied the European Masters especially Brueghel and Bosch and later Rembrandt. Religious themes became prominent in the work although he gave them contemporary pertinence and universal significance and they were often sited in local landscape. In 1948 he commenced a magnificent series of landscapes based around the Wimmera which won him the respect of the Australian cultural establishment.

In the early fifties, Boyd turned much attention to ceramics and produced some of his finest sculpture. In 1956-57 Boyd painted the much acclaimed Bride Series which bought him international attention and arguably, is his best work. These important Chagall-like allegorical paintings also known as "Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste", were made from observations during a trip from Alice Springs to Arltunga in 1951 and are concerned with the problems facing half-cast Aborigines and poverty. Boyd was one of the seven artists who contributed to the controversial Antipodeans exhibition, 1959 which defended form and figuration and questioned the all
encompassing conversion to abstract expressionism.
In 1960, Boyd moved to London and from 1970 divided his time between Britain, Tuscany and the Shoalhaven River, NSW. His work continued to include landscape and mythology - religious and allegorical. He has designed and painted sets for major London productions.

 Arthur Boyd was a painter, potter and printmaker from a family of artists. Boyd aimed to convey an inner emotional vision through his work, rather than describing the external world. He painted lyrical and emotive allegories on universal themes of love, loss and shame, often located in the Australian bush. These artworks draw on a wealth of literary and mythological sources as well as intensely personal and often ambiguous symbolism. Boyd had a strong social conscience and his paintings engage deeply with humanitarian issues.

Boyd attended night classes at the National Gallery School in Melbourne in 1935 and was taught by his parents, Merric and Doris Boyd at their home in Murrumbeena, Victoria. At age 14 he went to live with and learn from his grandfather, Arthur Merric Boyd, on the Mornington Peninsula. He was influenced by his contact with the Jewish immigrant artist Yosl Bergner, who introduced Boyd to such writers as Dostoyevsky and Kafka.

Conscripted into the Cartographic Unit of the army in 1942 during the Second World War, Boyd did not see active service, but the war supplied the subject matter for his paintings of the 1940s, which featured the crippled and wounded in turbulent settings. After the war he established the Arthur Merric Boyd Pottery Workshop at Murrumbeena, with John Perceval and Peter Herbst. In the late 1940s Boyd turned to the Bible as a way of expressing the horror and suffering of war. Paintings such as The expulsion, 1947-48 draw on biblical narratives of punishment and depict nature as an overwhelming force controlling the individual.

Travelling around central Australia in the 1950s he was shocked by the conditions in which Aboriginal people were living in Alice Springs. This experience initiated the Love, marriage and death of a half-caste series of 31 paintings, also known as The bride, which imagined the figure of an Aboriginal person of mixed descent as a neglected outsider. The series was exhibited in Melbourne in 1958 where it raised contentious issues about the ongoing marginalisation of Aboriginal people.

Boyd was associated with the Antipodeans, a group of painters founded in 1959 and championed by art historian Bernard Smith, who attempted to promote figurative art at a time when abstract painting and sculpture was in the ascendancy. The group had an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and in 1959 Boyd relocated to London with his family, where he remained until 1971. Despite his English location, Boyd continued to depict Australian subjects, locating his allegorical and mythical scenes in Australian bush settings (Nebuchadnezzar on fire falling over a waterfall, 1966-68).

In 1971 he returned to Australia, eventually settling at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales where he continued to paint landscapes. His Australian scapegoat paintings of the 1980s explored constructions of Australian identity in the lead up to the bicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1988. With their violent imagery and aggressive colouring they draw on archetypes of Australian military history to suggest the futility of war. In addition to painting, Boyd worked prolifically in ceramics, designed sets for the theatre, and provided illustrations for the poems of Australian poet Peter Porter.

In 1993 a major retrospective of Boyd’s work was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In the same year, Arthur and his wife Yvonne gifted their property Bundanon, comprising of 1,100 hectares, to the Australian people.

 

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2021

2020

2019

2017

2016

2014

Selected Group Exhibitions

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2009

Arthur Boyd was an Australian painter who was born in 1920. Their work is currently being shown at TarraWarra Museum of Art in Healesville.

Numerous key galleries and museums such as Bendigo Art Gallery have featured Arthur Boyd's work in the past.

Arthur Boyd's work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from 26 USD to 1,470,643 USD, depending on the size and medium of the artwork.

Since 2001 the record price for this artist at auction is 1,470,643 USD for Bride Running Away, sold at Smith & Singer, Melbourne in 2012. 

Arthur Boyd the most recent article is Australian Superfund Cbus Will Liquidate $9 Million Australian Art Collection written for Ocula in July 2022. The artist died in 1999.

Artist's alternative names: Arthur Boyd, Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd, Arthur Merric Boyd

 

Arthur BOYD was a figurative expressionist painter, ceramicist, potter and printmaker from a family of artists. Arthur BOYD is considered one of Australia’s most significant modern artists (born in 1920), he was taught by his grandfather, prominent painter Arthur Merric BOYD.

Arthur Boyd served in the Second World War and his experiences influenced the subsequent themes of psychological anguish and suffering in his work.

Following the war Arthur Boyd became friends with art patrons John and Sunday Reid. BOYD and his family lived and exhibited in London during the 1960s.

Boyd returned to Australia in the 1970s and lived at properties in Shoalhaven and Bundanon, areas which he painted until his death in 1999. A major retrospective of his work was held in 1994 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. BOYD received an Order of Australia in 1979 and Companion of the Order of Australia in 1992.

 

AWARDS

1956 Signatory to Antipodean Manifesto

1971 Britannica Award

1979 OBE, London UK

1979 Order of Australia (OA) for services to the arts

1995 Australian of the Year

Arthur BOYD painted lyrical and emotive allegories on universal themes of love, loss and shame, often located in the Australian bush. These artworks draw on a wealth of literary and mythological sources as well as intensely personal and often ambiguous symbolism. BOYD had a strong social conscience and his paintings engage deeply with humanitarian issues.

BOYD attended night classes at the National Gallery School in Melbourne in 1935 and was taught by his parents, Merric and Doris BOYD at their home in Murrumbeena, Victoria.

At age 14 he went to live with and learn from his grandfather, Arthur Merric BOYD, on the Mornington Peninsula. He was influenced by his contact with the Jewish immigrant artist Yosl Bergner, who introduced BOYD to such writers as Dostoyevsky and Kafka.

Conscripted into the Cartographic Unit of the army in 1942 during the Second World War, BOYD did not see active service, but the war supplied the subject matter for his paintings of the 1940s, which featured the crippled and wounded in turbulent settings. After the war he established the Arthur Merric BOYD Pottery Workshop at Murrumbeena, with John Perceval and Peter Herbst.

In the late 1940s BOYD turned to the Bible as a way of expressing the horror and suffering of war. Paintings such as The expulsion, 1947-48 draw on biblical narratives of punishment and depict nature as an overwhelming force controlling the individual.

During the 1940s his work went through several phases including the painting of a large mural at the home of his uncle, Martin BOYD, at Harkaway near Berwick, Victoria. A series of landscapes of north-west Victoria, a nine metre ceramic sculpture he built in Melbourne for the Olympic Games swimming pool in 1955 and he celebrated his 'Half-Caste Bride' series painted 1957-59 after an earlier visit to Central Australia.

Travelling around central Australia in the 1950s he was shocked by the conditions in which Aboriginal people were living in Alice Springs. This experience initiated the Love, marriage and death of a half-caste series of 31 paintings, also known as The bride, which imagined the figure of an Aboriginal person of mixed descent as a neglected outsider. The series was exhibited in Melbourne in 1958 where it raised contentious issues about the ongoing marginalisation of Aboriginal people.

BOYD was associated with the Antipodeans, a group of painters founded in 1959 and championed by art historian Bernard Smith, who attempted to promote figurative art at a time when abstract painting and sculpture was in the ascendancy. The group had an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and in 1959 BOYD relocated to London with his family, where he remained until 1971. Despite his English location, BOYD continued to depict Australian subjects, locating his allegorical and mythical scenes in Australian bush settings (Nebuchadnezzar on fire falling over a waterfall, 1966-68).

A prize winning film was made in Melbourne about his 'Half-Caste Bride' series by Tim Burstall and Patrick Ryan in 1959. During the 1960s he lived mostly with his family in London, exhibited widely and established an international reputation including a Romeo and Juliet ceramic Triptych in 1964 to honour Shakespears's 400 year anniversary.

In 1971 he returned to Australia, eventually settling at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales where he continued to paint landscapes. His Australian scapegoat paintings of the 1980s explored constructions of Australian identity in the lead up to the bicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1988. With their violent imagery and aggressive colouring they draw on archetypes of Australian military history to suggest the futility of war. In addition to painting, BOYD worked prolifically in ceramics, designed sets for the theatre, and provided illustrations for the poems of Australian poet Peter Porter.

During 1971-72 for six months at ANU, Canberra, as a resident Fellow in Creative Arts.

In 1975 he presented a large collection of sculptures, etchings and paintings to the ANG Canberra and in 1984 was commissioned to design the tapestry for the reception hall at new Parliament House, Canberra. Worked in UK for part of 1989-90.

EXHIBITIONS

Arthur BOYD held many one-man shows in Australia and overseas over the years including Zwemmer Gallery, London

1958  Venice Biennale and Australian Painters

1964-66 Exhibition (Mertz Collection) Corcoran Gallery

1962 Retrospective shows at Whitechapel Gallery, London

1967 Washington DC USA

1969 Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh

1971 ANU Canberra 1971-72 and Skinner Gallery Perth

1973,80,83,86 Fischer Fine Art UK

1978,8 Rudy Komon Gallery

1979 Fremantle Arts Centre

1976,81,82,(retro),85,87 Australian Galleries Melbourne 

1982 Qld. Uni. Art Museum

1983 Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong

1984,87 Wagner Gallery

1984 AGSA

1984,88 BMG Adelaide

1984 Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan (Wagner Gallery)

1986,87,89von Bertouch, Newcastle 

1985 Works Gallery, Geelong

1985 Solander Canberra

1985 Holdsworth 1

1988 HPAC

1988 & 89(retro) BMG Sydney

1989 Wagner Gallery

1978 'Landscape and Image', Australian Gallery Directors Council Travelling Exhibition to Indonesia

1985 Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC

1988 Commonwealth Institute, London

1988 Venice Biennale

1987 Australian Consulate General, Los Angeles

1993 a major retrospective of BOYD work held at the Art Gallery of NSW

1993 Arthur and his wife Yvonne gifted their property Bundanon, to Australian people

1995 Arthur BOYD is awarded the Australian of the Year

1997 The Best of BOYD exhibition comprising 100 paintings and 40 bronze sculptures was held at Galeria Aniela fine art gallery, NSW

     

 

FP-SMH 

the Sydney Morning Herald Front page (17 May 1997)

Best of BOYD exhibition coup the front page of the Sydney Moring Herald (Australia)

VIDEO: ABC TV Australian National NEWS in Galeria Aniela BOYD

VIDEO: ABC TV Sunday Afternoon Best of BOYD Exhibition in Galeria Aniela

 
 

A long history with the BOYD family signed by Arthur BOYD

 
 

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If you consider selling work of Arthur Boyd, Brett Whiteley, Fred Williams, Guy Boyd, John PercevalCharles Blackman, Garry Shead, John Olsen, Arthur Streeton or another significant work of fine art, please contact us. 

 

 

Video Jamie Boyd, the Boyd family most important LIVING artist
 

The BOYD family exhibition in Galeria Aniela coup the front page Sydney Morning Herald, Australian National NEWS the ABC TV and Sunday Afternoon the ABC TV.
 

John Perceval Retrospective conquer the Australian National NEWS ABC TV and Charles Blackman Retrospective won Australian Art Scream SBS TV.

 

Galeria Aniela exhibitions on Australian National News, the ABC TV

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ABC TV National News Boyd   Sunday Afternoon ABC TV    ABC TV National News Perceval
 

 

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