Arthur Boyd Australian, 1920-1999

Australian Galleries, Melbourne (label on the reverse, no. 696)

Corporate collection, Melbourne

Boyd first visited the Shoalhaven, upstream from Nowra on the New South Wales south coast, in 1971 and two years later purchased the riverfront property, ‘Riversdale’. This was a landscape that he came to know intimately, in all its moods. Here the characteristic vertical emphasis of the bush vegetation, the primeval stillness under clear blue sky and brilliant light, reveal a remarkable continuity with earlier interpretations of the Australian landscape, such as Tom Roberts’s iconic The Break Away or Bailed Up of the 1890s. However, for Boyd, such parallels would only ever be points of departure and the flat pattern he evokes is distinctly and deliberately modernist.

Through the 1970s, the Shoalhaven landscape became the chief source of inspiration for all Boyd’s work, and he purchased the neighbouring property – ‘Bundanon’ – in 1979. Shoalhaven River is pure landscape, without any of the literary or religious significance with which he sometimes imbued his Shoalhaven paintings. As his biographer Janet McKenzie explains, ‘The natural beauty of the Shoalhaven area caused Boyd to marvel constantly… Implied in Boyd’s celebration is the message that unless environmental issues are acknowledged and steps are taken to preserve the wilderness, it will all be destroyed… Boyd’s painting has altered our perceptions of the landscape in Australia profoundly’. ¹

Arthur Boyd’s long-held dream, that the beautiful place depicted here in Shoalhaven River would be preserved for posterity, was fulfilled in 1993 when the Australian government accepted his Bundanon properties as a gift to the nation.

1. McKenzie, J., Arthur Boyd at Bundanon, Academy Editions, London, 1994, p. 42.

Please note this lot is subject to G.S.T.