Arthur Merric Boyd

Arthur Boyd Painting

Arthur Boyd, one of the most famous of the descendants of the Boyds of Ballymacool, was born on 24 July 1920 in Murrumbeena, near Melbourne, Australia, to an artistic family. His grandfather, Arthur Merric, was a well-known landscape artist, his father Merric was a studio potter and his mother was a painter.

Boyd left school at the age of fourteen to work in a paint factory owned by an uncle. At the age of sixteen he began to paint landscapes and by seventeen he was exhibiting his work.

Boyd was one of the artists who played an important part in what has become known as the "Angry Decade" from 1937 to 1947. He was conscripted into the Australian Army Service Corps in 1939. Nonetheless he managed to participate in the exhibitions of the Contemporary Art Society during his service. At that time he was also beginning to develop a personal style, which combined surrealism, social realism and expressionism.

Boyd left the Army in 1945. He married a former art student, Yvonne Lennie. During the late 1940's, he painted such works as The Mockers and The Mourners. In 1948-1949, he produced his Berwick and Wimmera landscapes. As a result of a visit to Central Australia in 1951, he was struck by the depth of poverty among the Aboriginal people and was inspired to paint his best known series of paintings entitled Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste.

Boyd lived in England from 1959 until 1971. In 1960, he had his first London show at the Zwemmer Gallery. He moved from the Half-Caste cycle to the Nebuchadnezzar series in 1966. In 1968 he made lithographs on the theme of St. Francis of Assisi and a collection of tapestries and pastels on the same theme followed. All of these works were exhibited at Fischer Fine Art Gallery in London.

In 1971, Boyd returned to Australia on a Fellowship to the Australian National University in Canberra. During the 1970's and 1980's he returned to landscape painting. Major commissions featured heavily in Boyd's career during the 1980's. Included amongst these was a commission for a tapestry for the Parliament House Authority in Canberra and another to paint sixteen canvases for the foyer of the State Theatre at the Victoria Arts Centre, Melbourne.

In 1993 Boyd gave his extensive properties at Bundanon to the Australian public for the creation of a National Arts and Environment Centre. The trust provides places for artists in residence. It is also developing exchange programmes, especially between England, Asia and Australia.

Arthur Boyd received many public honours, including the Order of the British Empire in 1970 and was voted Australian of the Year in 1995. He died in Melbourne on April 24th 1999 aged 78, leaving a rich legacy of drawings, paintings and sculpture. He is best described in an article by The Times newspaper:

"He was a rare 20th-century visionary who dealt with great themes, both personal and public, without ever losing his sense of place".