One of Australia’s most significant 20th-century artists, Arthur Boyd AC OBE created expressive, vigorously painted works charged with emotion and rich symbolism. In Potter by his kiln Boyd has painted his father, the pioneering ceramicist Merric Boyd (1888–1959), who is widely regarded as Australia’s first studio potter. Established in 1913, Merric’s pottery studio at the Boyd family home in Murrumbeena, Melbourne was a creative hub for generations of artists.
This portrait belongs to a group of paintings Arthur made while living in London during the 1960s, reflecting on the lives and creative legacies of his parents, Merric and Doris Boyd. It is rooted in a childhood memory that continued to haunt him. Writing in 1995, he recalled secretly adding coal to his father’s kiln, hoping to see more smoke. When Merric opened the kiln, he discovered that many of the pots had been smoke-damaged. Exhausted and distressed, he collapsed beside it in an epileptic seizure. Arthur later admitted, ‘To this day I feel great guilt.’ Set against the deep blue light of evening, Merric’s outstretched figure echoes the muted tones of the damaged pots scattered around him. The kiln rises like a monument within the landscape, transforming a childhood memory into a meditation on artistic inheritance, and the complex yet enduring bond between father and son.
Gift of Pamela Darling 2025. Donated through the Australian Cultural Gifts Program in memory of the late Peter Hinneberg.
Arthur Boyd © Bundanon Trust
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Patrick McCaughey explores a striking Boyd self portrait.
Works by Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan bring the desert, the misty seashore and the hot Monaro plains to exhibition Open Air: Portraits in the landscape.
