ARTHUR BOYD

Fine Australian Paintings, Sotheby's, 22 April 1991, lot 325
Private collection, Sydney

Good condition
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Arthur Boyd first visited Shoalhaven at Christmas in 1971, spending several weeks  exploring and painting the river landscape at 'Bundanon', the property of the art dealer Frank McDonald.  He quickly became inspired by the district, and he and Yvonne purchased 'Riversdale' in August 1973.

Boyd's Shoalhaven paintings are born from his obsession with and exploration of a particular landscape.  These paintings of the river and the bush-covered escarpment behind have entered the Australian psyche, becoming some of the most recognisable images of the Australian landscape.  As Janet McKenzie notes: 'The natural beauty of the Shoalhaven area caused Boyd to marvel constantly.  His paintings are a celebration of the grandeur and wonder of Nature.  It is to Boyd's credit that a single landscape can inspire such diversity of work.  He gives us the impression that in life there are infinite possibilities, as long as we train ourselves to see.'¹

The present work is a deceptively simple transcription of the view, without the mythological or allegorical subject matter introduced into many of the Shoalhaven pictures.  However, the work does include a number of the familiar elements of the local iconography: the tiny monogram of a black swan rests upon the surface of the water and above it and to the left is the black lozenge-shaped shadow reflection Boyd famously borrowed from Tom Roberts's In a corner on the McIntyre.  In the sky, a sulphur-crested cockatoo flies, wings spread, returning Boyd and the viewer to the imagery of his earlier Wimmera landscapes.   The rocks and trees are aflame with the vibrant opal colours of a reflected sunset.  It is a joyful, splendid hymn to a much-loved landscape.

1. Janet McKenzie, Arthur Boyd at Bundanon, London, 1994, p. 42