ARTHUR BOYD

Savill Galleries, Sydney 
Private collection, Sydney
Australian & International Fine Art, Deutscher-Menzies, Melbourne, 2-3 September 2003, lot 79
Private Collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above

In Summer Morning, Rosebud, Arthur Boyd captures the still morning atmosphere leading up to the baking heat of midday through his use of a limited palette and the thick, textured application of paint. While the calm sea and sky may be blue, Boyd scumbles whites and pale yellows into and across the surfaces to create the impact of light rather than colour. The sand of the foreground provides the high tonal colour key of temperature, while the stillness sustained by the emphasis on horizontals is enlivened by the gentle curve of the waterline. In colour and created atmosphere, one is reminded of Arthur Streeton's masterly The purple noon's transparent might, 1896 (National Gallery of Victoria), especially in the evocations of the morning haze in the former and the noon haze in the latter. Boyd and his contemporaries were mindful of the earlier traditions of Australian painting, not only in style and technique, but also in subject. The beaches of Port Phillip Bay had been favourite painting grounds for Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton.

When Charles Conder came to Melbourne, its beach inspired him to paint one of his finest Australian works, A Holiday at Mentone, 1888 (Art Gallery of South Australia). Boyd was attracted by the beaches of the Mornington Peninsula, particularly at Rosebud, where he lived and painted with his grandfather, the artist Arthur Merric Boyd, during the late 1930s. As in Conder's painting, the motif of the jetty appealed to Boyd, who made effective compositional use of it in the early oil, Jetty at Rosebud, 1938, formerly in the collection of Dr Ursula Hoff. Summer Morning, Rosebud portrays the same scene from a greater distance, the jetty and horizon in total harmony. Boyd's regard for Australia's first Impressionists was such that in the fifties he painted his own special homage to Conder, Autumn Afternoon, Mentone, 1956-57, with the jetty as the feature of attention.