SHOALHAVEN LANDSCAPE WITH BLACK SWAN AND COCKATOO, c.1985
ARTHUR BOYD
oil on composition board
91.0 x 60.0 cm
signed lower right: Arthur Boyd
Private collection, London
Company collection, London
London to Sydney, Agnew's Gallery at Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney, 8–19 November 2011, cat. 5 (label attached verso)
London to Sydney, Agnew's Gallery, London, 2011, pp. 48–49 (illus.)
In 1973 Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne purchased Riversdale on the banks of the Shoalhaven River based on a photograph sent to him in England from his friend Frank McDonald. The artist commented that 'the photograph he sent made it look so romantic and beautiful that we bought it sight unseen'.1 The Boyds set about to restore the abandoned Victorian timber cottage on the property into a single level version of the neighbouring property, Bundanon, which he would also eventually acquire and bequeath to the nation. So began a tumultuous and at times ambiguous relationship with a tough landscape and one that turned out to be quite at odds with the idyllic vision McDonald's photograph first engendered in the artist. His exploration of the Shoalhaven environment and his engagement with it became one of Boyd's most enduring subjects right up until his death in 1999. It was as though he was forever trying to solve the riddle of this at once abundant and also destructive land. When asked how he felt about the Shoalhaven landscape he commented, 'It's foreign... it is a fierce country, subject to violent changes such as floods and intense heat. The actual size of things about the country, the boulders, the actual timber, is just larger. It's very challenging.'2
Painted around 1985, Shoalhaven Landscape with Black Swan and Cockatoo portrays a calm and benevolent place where nature is at peace with the landscape. Boyd loved to paint the world reflected in the Shoalhaven river on these calm days and here we see an elegant black swan drifting across the picture reflected perfectly on the water. Indeed the surface of the water is like a mirror reflecting not only the graceful swan but also the deep blue sky and the earth tones of the riverbank. The scene is balanced by the crisp white intrusion of a cockatoo in flight. Yet for all its serenity, the toughness of the landscape is never far away. Boyd has also painted the fallen eucalypts along the riverbank and the burnt tree trunks. They form a strong set of vertical lines within the picture plane and serve to remind us of the natural 'fierceness' inherent in this country, which Boyd explored with such deep fascination and a wary reverence.
1. McGrath, S., The Artist and the River, Bay Books, Sydney, 1982, p. 22
2. Ibid, p. 40
LARA NICHOLLS