Nude Standing in a Stream with Dog and Tent

Following his famous Bride series, painted in the late 1950s, Arthur Boyd began a more enigmatic series of paintings depicting figures in the landscape. Painted in the early 1960s and known as the Mythologies the subjects are frequently given simple descriptive titles, as for Nude standing in a stream with dog and tent, although some figures are identified as Biblical subjects or from Greek mythology. It is obvious that the subject of this painting has its origins in Greek mythology.

In Nude standing in a stream with dog and tent Boyd depicts Diana, the Roman virgin goddess of the hunt, who lived in the woods with her attendant nymphs. Spied on by the hunter Actaeon, Diana punished his voyeurism by turning him into a stag which is then set upon and killed by his dogs. The myth is savge and full of the combination of violence and allegory that so frequently inspired Boyd. In this painting however, rather than a more dramatic scene from the myth, Boyd has chosen a quieter moment. Diana has left her tent and bathed unobserved. She is about to step from the stream and reaches for her scarlet coat, which Boyd uses to signify important figues in other Biblical and mythological paintings. There is no sign of Actaeon, only Diana's faithful hound, the black spaniel, inspired by Peter, a dog from the artist's childhood, which appears in so many of his paintings. The scene is benign, unless you know the rest of the story.

Although painted in London, the unruly landscape is obviously the Australian bush just as the mythology is European. Throughout his career Boyd searched for a way to invest the Australian landscape with sotries appropriate for European Australians. He frequently made use of imagery from the Bible and antiquity and occasionally delved into stories of pioneers, bushrangers and outback life. In Nude standing in a stream with dog and tent Boyd sets a European myth in the Antipodean landscape. The effect is disquieting, but that is undoubtedly what he wanted.

Dr Ursula Hoff, one of Boyd's great biographers, notes the young painter's frustration in not finding an Old Master nude in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria and his pleasure in Piero di Cosimo's puzzling mythological subject in the National Gallery in London. In Piero's painting, Boyd discovered a sensual nude, an ambiguous subject and another watchful dog. Like Piero, Boyd allows the viewer to draw on knowledge and personal experience and to imagine what has happened or might be about to happen. He does, however, believe in the importance of his figures and the drama in which they are involved, whatever it might be and the scene he paints is full of potential drama.

Unlike the often flat and tightly controlled paintwork of the earlier Bride series, the paintings of the Mythologies show Boyd's return to his mastery of painterliness and revelry in the sensual qualities of paint. Over softly applied paint layers with great complexity of colour and tone, Boyd has added another layer of richly textured brushed, scumbled, and palette knife-applied paint. His delight in the act of painting results in a sensual surface helping to describe and enhance his subject. In the dark, textured landscape, the flesh of the naked Diana is pure white and smooth, some of this was possibly applied with the artist's fingers. The smoothness contrasts with the rich, red wiry hair of her head and sex and the velvety blackness of the watchful dog, itself contrasting with the rich texture of the landscape.

We are grateful to John McPhee for providing this catalogue entry.