Ubicación de la comuna donde se llevó a cabo la investigación

1 Arthur Boyd, Interview with Grazia Gunn, quoted in Arthur Boyd, Seven Persistent Images, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1985, p. 31.

2 Robert Hughes, “Nolan and Boyd”, Nation, 4 April, 1964.

3 Arthur Boyd, “Biographical Note” written for John Hetherington, author of

Australian Painters, Forty /Vq/zVe^Cheshire, Melbourne, 1963). Material not used by Hetherington was used by Franz Philipp and referred to as above. Franz Philipp, The Art of Arthur Boyd, Thames & Hudson, London, 1967, p. 31.

4 Bernard Smith, Australian Painting 1788-1970, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, p. 221.

5 Franz Philipp, op. cit., p. 29.

6 Noel Counihan, Interview with Janet McKenzie, Melbourne, 1985.

? Arthur Boyd, Interview with Janet McKenzie, NGA, Canberra, 1993.

« Janet McKenzie, Noel Counihan, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1986, p. 11.

9 Bernard Smith, Noel Counihan, Artist and Revolutionary Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1993, pp. 165-170.

io Richard Haese, Rebels and Precursors, The Revolutionary Years of Australian Ar( Allen Lane, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1981, p. 97

n Conversation between Janet McKenzie and Peter Herbst, Australian National University, Canberra, 1981. See Janet McKenzie, Labour History,

12 Franz Philipp, op. cit., p. 30.

B Ursula Hoff, The Art of Arthur Boyd, Andre Deutsch, 1986, p. 38.

14 Franz Philipp, op. cit., p. 30.

is Arthur Boyd, Interview with Grazia Gunn, Seven Persistent Images, op. cit., p. 31.

is The figure subject of the cripple is first documented in the Tadgell Catalogue of Drawings, Nos. 114 and 115 (Drawings, 1941-1943, Murrumbeena and South Melbourne). It is a reasonable supposition that the figure of the Cripple in Brueghel’s painting was a source of inspiration. Philipp hints as such, and refers in a footnote to that most famous painting, The Cripples (10.9) (Paris, Louvre, 1618), Franz Philipp, op. cit., Chapter III, Footnote 2, p. 138. This sourcing by Boyd, from reproductions, is not to be confused with the inspiration for the cripple in the painting The Gargoyles (1944) (3.8), which as distinct from that in

The Seasons (1944) (3.6), Ursula Hoff finds similar in features to John Perceval, Boyd’s brother-in-law, a polio victim. Both Philipp and Hoff refer only principally to Brueghel as an admitted source in Boyd for changes in technique. A change in composition is the high horizon line but, not the adoption of powerful universal motifs such as the cripples. Nor does Gunn, Seven Persistent Images

(1985), although specifically concerned in that work with “identifying the sources of Boyd’s constant imagery” (Mollison, “Introduction”) in recognising “the Cripples” as one of the seven key persistent images, consider the source for this imagery in Brueghel’s reproductions in books familiar to Boyd from 1942 in the

Art Room of the National Library, Melbourne, notwithstanding that Figure on crutches, beast and figure on bench (1942-3) (3.3), is given to be a “memory image of John Perceval” (Gunn, op. cit., p. 31). But this figure is an amputee, with a ‘stump’ leg, unlike Perceval, identical to the Brueghel figure type.

There are further strong similarities, as between the “persistent image” of the outstretched figure attributed by Gunn as inspired by the sight of Boyd’s father’s condition following an epileptic fit {ibid, p. 32) for example, in the charcoal drawing, Corpse, dog and hansom cab in an industrial street (c.1947) (3.14), and the outstretched figures in the Brueghel painting The Land of Cockaigne (1568) (10.8). Although Boyd worked autobiographicalexperienceinto these images, such similarities are too close, in art historical terms, to be deemed purely coincidental, and in terms of current attributive convention it is surely both creditable and appropriate for the artist’s real historical source in the work of Brueghel both in imagery and composition as well as in technique, to be fairly recognisedas such.

1? Arthur Boyd (1993) quoted by Barry Pearce, “Introduction”, Arthur Boyd Retrospective, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1993, p. 30.

is Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot, The Folio Society edition, London, 1971. Translated with an Introduction by David Magarshack (1955), p. 271. I have preferred here, after examining varied twentieth century translations of Dostoyevsky’s great novel, that by David Magarshack, as opposed to the official Soviet translation quoted by Grazia Gunn (translated Julius Katzer, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971) which is somewhat inferior. Informed opinion suggests it fails to reflect the true description and literary force of the original Russian prose, where the key characteristics concemingthe affliction of epilepsy are most effectively expressed and in terms readily comprehensible to anyone familiarwith the condition from immediateexperience.

20 Arthur Boyd, quoted by Grazia Gunn, op. cit., p. 31.

21 Ibid, p. 31.

22 Arthur Boyd, Interview with Janet McKenzie, Italy, 1990. See Franz Philipp, op. cit., p. 32.

23 Andre Masson, “Life and Liberty”, Art in Australia, A Sydney Morning Herald Publication, Sydney, March, 1942, pp. 11-17.

24 Ibid., p. 11.

25 Z&k/., p. 11.

26 //>/</, p. 11.

27 See Christopher Tadgell, “Introduction”,Merric Boyd Drawings, Seeker and Warburg, London, 1975.

2g Arthur Boyd, Interview with Grazia Gunn, op. cit., p. 34.

29 Grazia Gunn makes this point, ibid., p. 34.

30 Arthur Boyd, ibid., p. 24.

31 Livingin London at the time the Boyds were faced with the dilemma that if they returned home to Australia their son Jamie would be conscripted into the army to fight in the Vietnam war.

32 Arthur Boyd, Interview with Janet McKenzie, Italy, 1990.

33 Gaetan Picon, Surrealism 1919-1939, Skira, Geneva, 1977, p. 52.

34 Franz Philipp, op. cit., p. 31.

36

37

38

39

Ibid., p. 52.

Peter Herbst, “At Open Country Cottage in the 1940s”, The Art of the Boyds, Generations of Artistic Achievement^ atricia Dobrez and Peter Herbst), Bay Books, Sydney, 1990, p. 199.

Gaetan Picon, op. cit., p. 52.

Marcus Clarke, Australian Tales, Melbourne, 1896, pp. 1-2. Discussed by Manning Clark iny4 History of Australia, Vol. IV, 1851-1888, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1980, pp. 312-3.