.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Arthur Boyd left Australia for England in 1959, intending to make a six month visit. It would in fact be thirteen years before he returned to live in Australia. Boyd's Nude with Beast series, was executed in 1962 while the artist was living in Hampstead. It was a significant year in Boyd's career with the exhibition of a major retrospective of his work at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in June and July, which attracted intense critical and commercial acclaim. One hundred and fifty one paintings were hung in this exhibition including the entire Nude with Beast series.
Of the five works that formed this series, only the last three were subtitled Diana and Actaeon, a reference to the classical myth which tells the story of the goddess Diana, who was spied upon as she bathed by the hunter Actaeon. In vengeance, Diana transformed Actaeon into a stag, who was then set upon and torn apart by his own dogs.
The impetus for Boyd's interpretation of this story came from Titian's The Death of Actaeon 1562, which Boyd saw while it was on loan from Harewood House to the National Gallery in London in 1962. This was one of two works in the National Gallery that had a profound effect on Boyd's art during this period. The other was Piero di Cosimo's Death of Procris circa 1500, which provided the inspiration for one of Boyd's most enduring and endearing motifs - the figure of the watchful dog.
In his erudite and insightful book on Boyd's work, Franz Philipp discussed the influence of Titian's painting upon the Australian artist in the following terms: "This superb late Titian re-kindled an old theme of Boyd's erotic iconography: attraction and repulsion, desire and hostility, 'Beauty and the Beast...' The monster of the 'Nude with Beast' series is involved, if not active. A metamorphical being, like the half-transformed Actaeon, he moves upright on two legs, the head half shark, half reptile and with vague suggestions of stag or ram horns." (F Philipp, op.cit, p.104)
Boyd's paintings of mythical subjects are never literal translations of classical texts. Like the nature of myth itself, his paintings interpret and transfigure the narrative, blending his personal artistic iconography with timeless subjects. Thus the dog who sits patiently to one side in many of Boyd's forest and pond paintings, has now been transformed into Actaeon, who appears as a ghostly white beast with fangs, ablaze with movement and emotion. The nude figure of Diana (who is portrayed with Titian-coloured hair) has also been transformed. The vengeful goddess of myth is in an almost submissive pose that is derived from the diving nudes of Boyd's 'dark pond' paintings. She is so ethereal that the landscape shows through her torso; armless and with downcast eyes she appears as the hunted, while the Beast Actaeon is now the triumphant, dominant hunter.
Philipp went on to say of this painting: "In Nude with Beast IV the figures are smaller, it is pursuit and flight rather than thrust and clash that is rendered; the huntress's upper body is horizontally poised like a ramrod (armless again so as not to detract from the mass of the lunging); the beast shown in parallel movement of flight but with head turned back into the counter-diagonal; here the bodies are suffused with the reflections of a burning, evening sky." (F Philipp, op.cit, p.106)
In compositional terms, Nude with Beast IV is most closely aligned with Nude with Beast III (Diana and Actaeon I) which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Nude with Beast II (Diana and Actaeon series) is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra while Nude with Beast V (Diana and Actaeon III) was formerly in the Harold E. Mertz collection.
Of the five works that formed this series, only the last three were subtitled Diana and Actaeon, a reference to the classical myth which tells the story of the goddess Diana, who was spied upon as she bathed by the hunter Actaeon. In vengeance, Diana transformed Actaeon into a stag, who was then set upon and torn apart by his own dogs.
The impetus for Boyd's interpretation of this story came from Titian's The Death of Actaeon 1562, which Boyd saw while it was on loan from Harewood House to the National Gallery in London in 1962. This was one of two works in the National Gallery that had a profound effect on Boyd's art during this period. The other was Piero di Cosimo's Death of Procris circa 1500, which provided the inspiration for one of Boyd's most enduring and endearing motifs - the figure of the watchful dog.
In his erudite and insightful book on Boyd's work, Franz Philipp discussed the influence of Titian's painting upon the Australian artist in the following terms: "This superb late Titian re-kindled an old theme of Boyd's erotic iconography: attraction and repulsion, desire and hostility, 'Beauty and the Beast...' The monster of the 'Nude with Beast' series is involved, if not active. A metamorphical being, like the half-transformed Actaeon, he moves upright on two legs, the head half shark, half reptile and with vague suggestions of stag or ram horns." (F Philipp, op.cit, p.104)
Boyd's paintings of mythical subjects are never literal translations of classical texts. Like the nature of myth itself, his paintings interpret and transfigure the narrative, blending his personal artistic iconography with timeless subjects. Thus the dog who sits patiently to one side in many of Boyd's forest and pond paintings, has now been transformed into Actaeon, who appears as a ghostly white beast with fangs, ablaze with movement and emotion. The nude figure of Diana (who is portrayed with Titian-coloured hair) has also been transformed. The vengeful goddess of myth is in an almost submissive pose that is derived from the diving nudes of Boyd's 'dark pond' paintings. She is so ethereal that the landscape shows through her torso; armless and with downcast eyes she appears as the hunted, while the Beast Actaeon is now the triumphant, dominant hunter.
Philipp went on to say of this painting: "In Nude with Beast IV the figures are smaller, it is pursuit and flight rather than thrust and clash that is rendered; the huntress's upper body is horizontally poised like a ramrod (armless again so as not to detract from the mass of the lunging); the beast shown in parallel movement of flight but with head turned back into the counter-diagonal; here the bodies are suffused with the reflections of a burning, evening sky." (F Philipp, op.cit, p.106)
In compositional terms, Nude with Beast IV is most closely aligned with Nude with Beast III (Diana and Actaeon I) which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Nude with Beast II (Diana and Actaeon series) is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra while Nude with Beast V (Diana and Actaeon III) was formerly in the Harold E. Mertz collection.