Arthur Boyd: Agony & Ecstasy at the National Gallery of Australia

The National Gallery of Australia is exhibiting Arthur Boyd: Agony & Ecstasy until 9 November. It is the first major exhibition of Boyd’s art in over twenty years. The exhibition includes more than 180 spectacular works of art including paintings, tapestries, prints, drawings, sculptures and ceramics. The exhibition is on display in Canberra only.

The focus of the exhibition is on Arthur Boyd as an intense, passionate visionary capable of plumbing the depths and vicissitudes of human emotions. The show is not a retrospective but rather provides the opportunity to take a close look at a number of works that have never or rarely been previously exhibited, as well as series and groups of works, undertaken from 1937 through to 1980. While the Australian landscape informs some works, the emphasis is on the way that Boyd engages with human experience—starting with an intense early self-portrait painted when he was only seventeen through to works of great potency undertaken four decades later. While there are intimate as well as expansive works, the sheer scale of many of them mean that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see them together. While the public are perhaps very familiar with Boyd’s works from the 1940s and 50s, the exhibition also seeks to emphasise the strengths of his art created in the 1960s and 70s.

• • Arthur Boyd
    Self portrait in red shirt 1937
    oil on canvas on cardboard
    51.5 x 45.4 cm
    National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
    The Arthur Boyd gift 1975
    
    
    
    
    
• • Arthur Boyd
    Nebuchadnezzar making a cloud 1968
    oil on canvas
    174.8 x 183. 2 cm
    National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
    The Arthur Boyd gift 1975
    
    
    

    
    Arthur Boyd
• • Nebuchadnezzar being struck by lightning 1969
    oil on canvas
    174.3 x 183.2 cm
    National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
    The Arthur Boyd gift 1975
    
    

    

    
    Arthur Boyd
• • Paintings in the studio: 'Figure supporting back legs' and 'Interior with black rabbit' 1973–74
    oil on canvas
    313.5 x 433.2 cm
    National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
    The Arthur Boyd gift 1975
    
    
    

    
    Arthur Boyd
• • Birth of Narcissus 1976
    oil on canvas
    152.5 x 122.0 cm
    National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
    Gift of Joseph Brown 1991
    
    
    

    
    Arthur Boyd  
• • The unicorn sees the lady 1973–74, plate 10 in The lady and the unicorn, a portfolio of twenty-four etchings
    etching and aquatint
    78.8 x 57.6 cm
    National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1978
    Reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust
    
    
    

    
    Arthur Boyd  
• • The prodigal son 1948–49, from the Harkaway mural
    casein tempera, powder colour on plaster on mortar
    230.0 x 227.0 cm
    National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
    Gift of Arthur Boyd 1969
    Reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust
    
    
    

    
    Arthur Boyd  
• • The mining town (Casting the money lenders from the temple)c.1946
    oil and tempera on composition board
    87.4 x 109.4 cm
    National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Purchased 1974
    Reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust
    
    
    

    
    Arthur Boyd  
• • Europa and the bull 1951–52
    earthenware, coloured slips, clear glaze
    39.9 x 42.9 cm
    National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
    The Arthur Boyd gift 1975

The exhibition is extensive and includes important series such as the dramatic, biblical Nebuchadnezzar paintings, exquisite prints and large tapestries on the theme of The lady and the unicorn, lively costume designs for the ballet Elektra (choreographed by Robert Helpmann in 1963) and his remarkable Caged painter series. 

St Francis beaten by his father

A special room has also been constructed for Boyd’s visionary images on the life of St Francis, including prints and pastels as well as a dazzling group of large-scale tapestries not previously exhibited together.

Among the many works that have not been exhibited before is The prodigal son, a large fragment of a mural that was painted by Arthur for his uncle, the well-known novelist, Martin Boyd. Undertaken in 1948, its original location was the dining room of a house known as The Grange, built by his great grandparents in 1866 at Harkaway near Berwick in Victoria. Sadly, The Grange was eventually demolished to make way for a quarry. After years of thwarted attempts to save the mural, four relatively large components and several small sections were saved and eventually came to the National Gallery of Australia..

Manet, Cézanne, Van Gogh – Guests from Around the World

Key pieces from outstanding museums in the United States and Europe encounter the high-quality collection of late 19th-century, modern French art of Kunsthalle Mannheim, at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, September 26, 2014 - January 18, 2015.

“The Cardplayers” by Paul Cézanne (1892/95) flown in from London,

“The Dead Toreador” (probably 1864), a main work by Édouard Manet,  from Washington. 

A dialogue between masterpieces begins in the lavishly refurbished Jugendstil building. For the first time, the museum in Mannheim places the focus on its most valuable art treasures and enables the audience to view rare loans from around the world.

Claude Monet (1840–1926), Die Rue de la Bavolle in Honfleur, 1864 

Guest curator Dr. Marie-Amélie zu Salm-Salm juxtaposes the works in Mannheim with carefully selected, imposing counterparts from major European and American museums, thus highlighting important artistic innovations of this unique rise to modernism - like the treatment of colour and light, questions of composition, the choice of motifs, and the use of new painting techniques. Key works by Manet, Cézanne and Van Gogh, as well as paintings by Delacroix, Courbet, Corot, Pissarro, Sisley, Monet, and Renoir enter into a fascinating dialogue of styles and motifs. The focus on top class works of French painting allows visitors an intensive encounter with the individual work and its counterpart.

Édouard Manet’s “The Execution of Emperor Maximilian” 

Mirrored by the other, the key works of Mannheim can be newly perceived and taken to one’s heart.

A surprise waits for the visitor at the end of the tour: The view to 20th-century abstraction with pivotal works by Piet Mondrian, Ellsworth Kelly and Josef Albers, exemplarily reveal the impact of Impressionism on art and artists of the 20th century and their way of dealing with form and color.


One highlight is certainly the finale of the exhibition: 

Mondrian’s “Composition with Yellow and Blue”, 1932, from Switzerland, 

next to Cézanne’s “Smoker with Propped Arm” from Mannheim 

and his “The Card Players” (above) from London. This constellation visualizes Mondrian’s affinity to Cézanne’s approach of liberating colour from form.

Picturing America: Signature Works from the Westmoreland Museum of American Art

Childe Hassam (1859-1935), The Outer Harbour, 1909 oil on canvas, 28 x 26 3/16 in., Collection of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art,  Mary Marchand Woods Memorial Fund, 1964.1                                        Picturing America represents two hundred years of American art, from colonial times to the mid-twentieth century, as America came into its own as the cultural capital of the world. Seen through the subject areas of portraiture, still life, landscape, and narrative painting, the artists represented in this exhibition serve as a survey of American art.    Venues Dixon Gallery and Gardens Memphis, TN hrough October 6. 2013 Vero Beach Museum of Art February 15 - May 25, 2014 Georgia Museum of Ar June 14, 2014 - August 24, 2014 Hyde Museum, Glens Falls, N.Y., September 28, 2014 - January 4, 2015 From the 1758 Portrait of John Gardiner by John Singleton Copley to Milton Avery's Arrangement with Plants of 1948, the exhibition presents 57 paintings and sculptures that describe the American experience from the Colonial period to early Modernism. Gifford Beal, Sea Bass Fisherman, 1940, Oil on canvas, Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Anonymous Gift through the Westmoreland Society, 1995.51 Magnificent scenes of the early American landscape painted by Hudson River School artists Alfred Thompson Bricher, George Inness, and Worthington Whittredge recall the emergence of the Hudson River School during the nineteenth century, a period when our young nation was struggling to define its identity. The period of growth and development that ensued at the turn of the century coincided with a national shift in aesthetic—audiences will recognize this transition through impressionist pieces by Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, and Paul Cornoyer, and examples of urban Realism by Robert Henri and Everett Shinn. Moving into the twentieth century, Modernism and the move towards abstraction can be seen in scenes by Milton Avery and Guy Pène du Bois.  Other renowned artists from the two hundred year span represented in this selection include William Merritt Chase, Susan MacDowell Eakins, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri,  Paul Manship, John Singer Sargent and Benjamin West as well as Charles Willson Peale and his children Rembrandt, Rubens and Mary Jane. The rich variety of expressive means represented by the works in the exhibition, including still-life, portraiture, narrative and abstraction, provides a visual embodiment of such national ideals as freedom, diversity and opportunity.  Portraits, America's earliest and most dominant form of pictorial expression, were most often commissioned to record a person's affluence, as a means of attaining immortality and as memento mori pieces for remembering the dead.  The collection offers a spectrum, ranging from objective portraits like Westmoreland's first painting acquisition,  "Portrait of George Washington" by Rembrandt Peale,  to more subjective, narrative paintings like  "Death of Elaine" by Thomas Hovenden,  which depicts King Arthur, Queen Guenivere and Sir Lancelot mourning over the body of Elaine, who has died from a broken heart.  Though still-life paintings continued to thrive into the 20th Century, their focus generally shifted away from recording organic materials to creating arrangements of abstract forms. This contrast can be seen between trompe l'oeil master  Severin Roesen's "Still Life with Fruit,"  (ABOVE Is another Severin Roesen's "Still Life with Fruit," ) a brilliantly hued oil painting epitomizing the country's physical bounty, and American Abstract Artists founding member  Balcomb Greene's "Organic Forms," 1939 Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches Collection: Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Anonymous gift with additional funding from the William Jamison Art Acquisition Fund  a geometric work playing with shape and space. Reflecting the transformation of American society from primarily agrarian to industrial, the exhibition's landscape paintings range from pristine natural settings to city scenes. Lush waterfall painting  "Silver Thread Falls, Pennsylvania" by Hudson River School painter James Brade Sword and  "The Outer Harbor" by foremost Impressionist painter Frederick Childe Hassam  (above)  contrast greatly with the paintings of "Pittsburgh's Painter Laureate" Samuel Rosenberg, who documented socioeconomic life of the urban poor during the Depression. (An example of Rosenberg's work) Picturing America is organized and toured by the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, which is currently under renovation and expansion.

“Portrait of Helen Gallagher (Black and Green),” (ca. 1928) by Malcolm Parcell (1896-1987). Oil on canvas mounted on board, 44 1/2 x 40 inches. Gift of the Estate of Malcolm  Parcell (1896-1987). Oil on canvas mounted on board, 44 1/2 x 40 inches. Gift of the Estate of Malcolm Purcell, Westmoreland Museum of American Art. (Photo: COURTESY of The Hyde Collection Art Museum & Historic House) Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837–1908), Point Judith, Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, ca. 1885. Oil on canvas, 13 x 29 inches. Westmoreland Museum of American Art; Gift of the Westmoreland Society, 1998.2 John George Brown (1831–1913), Maid of the Hills, ca. 1900. Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches. Westmoreland Museum of American Art; Gift of Mrs. Paul B. Ernst, 1981.78 Robert Henri (1865–1929), Picnic at Meshoppen, PA, July 4, 1902, 1902. Oil on canvas, 26 x 32 inches.  Westmoreland Museum of American Art; Gift of the William A. Coulter Fund, 1958.39