Olive Tree Angel and Europa (Exile Series)
Oil on Canvas
54x65cm
Signed Lower Left, Dated 1972 Lower Right
Prov: Andrew Ivanyi Galleries label verso
Private Collection Adelaide
$10,000-15,000
(Duplicated from Lot.49 Essay Related to both works.)
Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, David Boyd developed a succession of interconnected painting series that explored Australian colonial history, childhood, mythology, morality and the human condition. Among these were The Wanderer, The Orchard of Heaven, The Garden in the Wildernessand The Exiles. Although conceived as individual bodies of work, these series shared recurring figures, allegorical narratives and symbolic imagery, reflecting the development of Boyd’s artistic and philosophical interests. This period was particularly significant during his residence in southern France from 1970, when his earlier engagement with Australian historical subjects increasingly gave way to more personal and mythological interpretations of human experience.
The Wanderer series, developed in the late 1960s and exhibited in Adelaide in 1970, drew upon the life of Benjamin Boyd, the nineteenth-century colonial entrepreneur and adventurer. Through this historical figure, Boyd examined ambition, conquest and the moral complexities of European settlement in Australia. These concerns gradually developed into the more allegorical imagery of The Orchard of Heaven, exhibited in 1971, in which themes of innocence, freedom, religious belief and changing social values became increasingly prominent. The following year, The Garden in the Wilderness drew upon Boyd’s childhood memories of the family property at Murrumbeena, incorporating gardens, fruit trees, children and biblical figures into compositions that explored the relationship between memory, innocence and moral experience.
The development of The Exiles series in 1973 extended these investigations into questions of displacement, alienation and belonging. Drawing upon concerns already present in The Wanderer and Boyd’s earlier paintings of Australian colonial history, the series employed allegory to examine the individual’s relationship with society and the experience of separation from an imagined or remembered homeland. Across these successive bodies of work, Boyd established a personal symbolic language in which historical narratives, childhood recollections and religious mythology frequently intersected.
The subjects and imagery established during this period continued to inform Boyd’s paintings throughout the latter 1970s and into the early 1980s. His recurring representations of children, gardens, animals and imagined landscapes reflected an ongoing interest in innocence, memory and the complexities of human behaviour. Although his subsequent paintings were not necessarily conceived as direct continuations of the original series, they demonstrate the persistence of the allegorical and narrative concerns that had become central to his artistic practice. Together, these works represent a substantial and interconnected body of painting within Boyd’s broader career.
