Installation view, Arthur Boyd: Tapestries, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2026, featuring: Arthur Boyd, Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre, St Francis turning Brother Masseo, 1973; St Francis being beaten by his father, 1973; St Francis blowing Brother Masseo into the air, 1973, purchased 1975, Arthur Boyd’s work reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust. Photo: NGA.
Some exhibitions have a long gestation period – this one, more than half a century.
Arthur Boyd (1920-1999) developed an interest in the St Francis legend in the early 1950s; by the mid-1960s, it had grown into an obsession.
In 1965, he exhibited a series of pastel drawings on the theme of St Francis at the Australian Galleries in Melbourne that led to very few sales.
Unperturbed, Arthur Boyd decided to select 20 of these pastel images and sent them as large-format transparencies to Portugal, where he commissioned the Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre to weave 20 huge tapestries, each about 2.5 metres by almost 3.5 metres.
These were woven between 1972 and 1974 and were spotted by the inaugural director of the National Gallery of Australia, James Mollison, who promptly bought them in 1975 for the national collection.
It was another seven years before the Australian National Gallery, as it was then known, opened its doors, and the Boyd tapestries languished in storage for over half a century, until this week when the gallery mounted this stunning exhibition.
Installation view, Arthur Boyd: Tapestries, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2026, featuring: Arthur Boyd, Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre, St Francis when young turning aside, 1972; St Francis being beaten by his father, 1973; St Francis when young dreaming of a hunchback, 1972, purchased 1975, Arthur Boyd’s work reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust. Photo: NGA.
Arthur Boyd is not an illustrator. He invents a personal narrative that often draws on religious stories, classical mythology or events he personally experienced, such as the squalor of life in Melbourne during the war years or life in Aboriginal camps.
He grew up within an artistic dynasty. His father, Merric Boyd, was a pioneering studio potter who was an eccentric, epileptic and deeply religious man, for whom the division between reality and the Old Testament was not readily observed.
They lived in Murrumbeena, a semi-rural emerging suburb on the south-eastern outskirts of Melbourne, in a place called Open Country Cottage.
It was a house steeped in traditional humanist values and where readings from the Bible, in these pre-TV days, were frequently supplemented with readings from Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Dylan Thomas and TS Eliot.
Arthur Boyd was not an overtly religious painter, but biblical narratives served as a metaphorical armature on which he could build a broader commentary on the human condition.
He started working on the St Francis legend while still living in Murrumbeena, and after his father died in 1959 and he moved to England, his interest deepened. He visited Assisi and Gubbio in Tuscany, Italy, which lies at the heart of the Franciscan movement.
Arthur Boyd, Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre (tapestry workshop), St Francis kissing the Wolf of Gubbio 1974, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/ Canberra, purchased 1975 © Reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust. Photo: NGA.
The St Francis that we encounter in the lithographs, pastels and tapestries in this exhibition is very different from that seen in traditional iconography.
Arthur Boyd zeroes in on aspects of human drama, such as the saint encountering a leper, showing kindness to St Claire, or taming the wolf of Gubbio.
About the time these tapestries were made, Boyd was quoted as saying, “I’d say my work was about feeling more than anything else. I don’t think you can get this feeling over without having an idea to hang it on.
“When I am going to paint, I make many drawings, hoping for something in the drawings that I might latch on to. Being primarily a figurative painter, I suppose the ideas behind these drawings are of a literary nature, but I would hope that some strength of feeling would come through.”
Arthur Boyd, Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre (tapestry workshop), St Clare attending to St Francis 1974, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, Arthur Boyd’s work reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust. Photo: NGA.
The tapestries themselves almost resemble facsimile reproductions of the pastel drawings, but on a much grander scale.
From a distance, it is difficult to see that these were, in fact, tapestries as they were executed with enormous attention to detail. They are beautifully displayed in the gallery, with one of them suspended in space so it can be viewed from both sides.
We see many of the pastel drawings, the earlier gorgeous black-and-white lithographs, and even the transparencies from which the tapestries were made.
Possibly the tapestries demand a greater viewing distance – preferably displayed at some height within an architectural setting.
Arthur Boyd, Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre, Lurdes Branquinho (draughtsman (intermediary), St Francis holding St Clare’s hair, 1974, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 1975, Arthur Boyd’s work reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust. Photo: NGA.
The exhibition has been worth the wait, and at a time when we struggle with the question of what it means to be human, Arthur Boyd, with power and glory, asserts that humans possess passion, love and beauty. These were qualities sacred to this medieval saint, and they are still relevant to us today.
You must see this exhibition to restore your faith in humanity.
Greg Weight, Arthur Boyd 1993, National Portrait Gallery of Australia, gift of Patrick Corrigan AM 2004, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, © Gregory Weight/Copyright Agency. Photo: NGA.
Arthur Boyd: Tapestries is at the National Gallery of Australia from 20 June to 18 October. Admission is free.
Original Article published by Sasha Grishin on Region Canberra.
