ARTHUR BOYD

The Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane (label on the reverse)
David and Zina Steeman Collection, Melbourne
Fine Australian and International Paintings and Decorative Arts, Sotheby's, Sydney, 27 August 2001, lot 26
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above

Arthur Boyd's hauntingly beautiful paintings of the 'Bride' series of the late-1950s are numbered among his finest, firm of figure and powerful of imagery. Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste, as the series was called collectively, touches on the epic and the heroic, an Antipodean tragedy of the proportions of Romeo and Juliet. Today, the presence of key works in major public and private collections — the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia — confirms their stature in Australian art. Returning to the 'Bride' subject during his first years in London, Boyd's technique became more painterly and figures integrated with their bushland settings. They metamorphosed into dragonflies or windmills as themes of thwarted love, of Eros; and references to classical mythology emerged in the highly personalised, often erotic, symbolism, influenced by Renaissance masters and the vigour of contemporary expressionism. His paint took on a greater thickness through the developed skill of his handling. The bride, Nebuchadnezzar (sometimes on fire), and other themes continued into later years. In Bride at a Waterfall the plunging figure in white becomes the waterfall at which she drinks below, the firey consuming passion of her lover emerging from the primal forest, figured partly in elements of face and hand reaching to touch the downward rush. Figures emerge and submerge in the bushland of a highly idiosyncratic work, of multiple meaning and quenching thirst, redolent with the energy of drama.