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Lot Essay
From 1953-55 Arthur Boyd's work focused almost exclusively on sculpture. Then in a definate shift, there was a return to landscape and narrative paintingin oils from 1956 until he departed for England in 1959.
Boyd's response to the Australian landscape is central to his oeuvre. At the time when he was focusing on the epic narrative paintings of The Bride serises, exhibited in 1958, his landscape paintings were a direct and immediate response to his real environment. These landscapes of the late 1950s depict animals and humans engaged in ordinary every day activities, yet there is often a tension in these works. Keyborough is a work that is haunting in its portrayal of the mood and feel of the Victorian landscape. Here Boyd is at his best as an expressive painter; with the moody sky, skeletal trees and a small lonely figure. This is a psychologically powerful paintings- the impending storm imbuses the work with a sense of menace that lends it an appealing enigmatic quality.
Boyd's naturalistic landscape of this time demonstrate a sensuality and pleasure in his handling of the rich paint. In Keyborough the open foreground is splattered with thick flowering tussocks and spring shrubs. Around this time Boyd would go out painting the landscape with John Perceval. It has been suggested that Boyd's reverie in the lush textures of his landscapes of this period may be attributed to the influence of Perceval.
"The iconography of the landscape, painted during his last years of residence in Melbourne.....underlies, on the whole, the consistency of [his] selective response, this recurrence of old themes, so characteristic of Boyd, and so very odvious with regard to his symbolic figments." (F Philip, Arthur Boyd, London, 1967, p 80)
Keysborough makes a subtle reference to Boyd's Hunter series of the 1940s although with none of the panic and terror of the earlier work.
Boyd's response to the Australian landscape is central to his oeuvre. At the time when he was focusing on the epic narrative paintings of The Bride serises, exhibited in 1958, his landscape paintings were a direct and immediate response to his real environment. These landscapes of the late 1950s depict animals and humans engaged in ordinary every day activities, yet there is often a tension in these works. Keyborough is a work that is haunting in its portrayal of the mood and feel of the Victorian landscape. Here Boyd is at his best as an expressive painter; with the moody sky, skeletal trees and a small lonely figure. This is a psychologically powerful paintings- the impending storm imbuses the work with a sense of menace that lends it an appealing enigmatic quality.
Boyd's naturalistic landscape of this time demonstrate a sensuality and pleasure in his handling of the rich paint. In Keyborough the open foreground is splattered with thick flowering tussocks and spring shrubs. Around this time Boyd would go out painting the landscape with John Perceval. It has been suggested that Boyd's reverie in the lush textures of his landscapes of this period may be attributed to the influence of Perceval.
"The iconography of the landscape, painted during his last years of residence in Melbourne.....underlies, on the whole, the consistency of [his] selective response, this recurrence of old themes, so characteristic of Boyd, and so very odvious with regard to his symbolic figments." (F Philip, Arthur Boyd, London, 1967, p 80)
Keysborough makes a subtle reference to Boyd's Hunter series of the 1940s although with none of the panic and terror of the earlier work.