Find Lots

• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Fine Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  28 Oct 2014 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  68
• Lot Description:
  Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd
  (1920-1999)
  Landscape with Hunter, Crows and Dark Pond circa 1962
  oil on board
  90.5 x 120.5 cm
  signed 'Arthur Boyd' lower right
• Provenance:
  Private Collection, Sydney; Lawson-Menzies, Modern, Contemporary Australian and Important Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 19 March 2008, lot no. 232 ; From the Collection of Marlene Antico, Sydney
• Notes:
  Arthur Boyd is one of Australia's modern masters of twentieth century. Boyd is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, state, regional, university and other public and private collections and has been included in most major touring exhibitions of Australian art held from the mid 1970s onwards. Boyd was the subject of a catalogue raisonne in 1967 compiled by art historian, Franz Philipp, who advocated that Boyd was the most significant artist of his generation. Boyd studied intermittently at the National Gallery of Victoria School and after marrying Yvonne Lennie in 1945, they lived first at Murrumbeena. Arthur Boyd spent a significant period of his career in London, where he was included in the prominent exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1961 and 1962 and the Tate Gallery in 1962. He was a generous benefactor, gifting works to the National Gallery of Australia and the properties Riverdale at Shoalhaven and Bundanon, NSW. Landscape with Hunter, Crows and Dark Pond, c. 1962 was painted while Boyd was living in London. Boyd has produced a number of works using the hunter as a subject, including The Hunter, which was shown at the prestigious Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne in the Winter Exhibition 1976 - Recent Acquisitions show.1 Many of Boyd's hunter works were created around the period 1962, with a number included in the exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in the same year. Similar works from the same series, such as the earlier example The Hunter, 1944, are in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Of these early hunter paintings, Janet McKenzie has noted that 'The Hunter paintings depict the Australian bush as hostile and menacing; the figure is both the hunter and the hunted.'2 Inspiration for Boyd's hunter-themed work in the 1940s was also provided by Titian's The Death of Actaeon, which he saw when it was on loan to the National Gallery, London. In the myth, the hunter Actaeon is punished by the goddess Diana for watching her bathing by turning him into a stag. He is then killed by his own dogs. Landscape with Hunter, Crows and Dark Pond could be read as an exploration of isolation, transformation and eroticism. Dr Shireen Huda 1 See also Franz Philipp, Arthur Boyd, Thames and Hudson, London, 1967, cat. no. 12.28 2 Janet McKenzie, Arthur Boyd - Art & Life, Thames and Hudson, London, 2000, p. 62
• Estimate:
  A$90,000 - 120,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

  Can't see the realised price? Upgrade your subscription now!

• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.