Arthur Boyd

Arthur Boyd and Saint Francis of Assisi is based on Margaret Pont’s Master’s thesis, which she wrote at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of the medievalist Margaret Manion. During the 1960s, Arthur Boyd made more than twenty pastels depicting various events from the saint’s life. He followed this with a series of lithographs, all of which are listed in Pont’s detailed catalogue. Then, from 1972 to 1974, Boyd had twenty tapestries woven by the Manufactura Tapecarias de Portalegre in Portugal, to cartoons produced from transparencies of the original pastels. These works, which have never been exhibited together in their entirety, continue to gather dust in the Hume storage depot of the National Gallery of Australia. Pont also includes in her catalogue a number of related drawings, unfinished pastel sketches and three oil paintings dealing with the theme of St Francis.

Biography can be difficult to achieve. There is the balance between too much detail, where one can’t see the wood for the family trees, or not enough, which can be disappointing all round. One also bears in mind possible antipathy: Sigmund Freud, who famously began burning his personal papers at twenty-nine, was dismissive of future chroniclers: ‘As for biographers, I am already looking forward to seeing them go astray.’