Penleigh Boyd

Theodore Penleigh Boyd (15 August 1890 – 27 November 1923) was an Australian artist.

Penleigh Boyd was a member of the Boyd artistic dynasty: his parents Arthur Merric Boyd (1862-1940) and Emma Minnie Boyd (née à Beckett) were well-known artists of the day, and his brothers included Merric Boyd the ceramacist (1888-1959) and the novelist Martin Boyd (1893-1972). His son Robin Boyd (1919-1971) was a noted writer and architectural critic, and his nephews Arthur Boyd and David Boyd became prominent artists.

Born in England at Penleigh House, Westbury, Wiltshire, Boyd received his artistic training from his parents and at the National Gallery Art School. He had his first exhibition at the Victorian Artists' Society at 18, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in London at 21. He won second prize in the Australian Federal Government's competition for a painting of the site of the new national capital, Canberra. He won the Wynne Prize in 1914 with "Landscape". He served in the AIF (Australian Infantry Forces) in France in World War I, and was invalided out after being badly gassed at the battle of Ypres in 1917. His career was cut short when he was killed in a car accident near Warragul, Victoria in 1923.

Penleigh Boyd is best known as a landscapist with an accomplished handling of evanescent effects of light. A notable influence was artist E. Phillips Fox, who introduced him to plein air techniques when they were neighbours in Paris in 1912-1913. At his death his obiturists compared him to Arthur Streeton and rated him as one of the most promising painters of his generation.

ee also

*Art of Australia

External links

* [http://www.brightoncemetery.com/HistoricInterments/150Names/boydp.htm Theodore (Penleigh) Boyd (1890-1923] Gravesite at Brighton General Cemetery (Vic)
* [http://www.artema.com.au/Boyd/aus_nz/penleigh.htm Penleigh and all the Boyds]

References

* Brenda Niall, "The Boyds", Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 2002. (ISBN 0-522-84871-0)