Arthur Boyd’s Studio, Open Country, by Albert Tucker, c 1945, State Library Victoria, gift of Mrs Barbara Tucker under the Cultural Gifts Program, 2010

From left: Matcham Skipper, Myra Skipper, Joy Hester, Yvonne Lennie, Arthur Boyd, David Boyd.

A member of an artistic dynasty and one of Australia’s leading 20th-century painters, Arthur Boyd was active in the Angry Penguins group but deliberately stayed on the fringe of the Heide circle’s emotional politics. He was a founder – with John Perceval and Charles Blackman – of the Antipodeans, reasserting figurative art in response to the postwar vogue for abstract expressionism. Open Country, Boyd’s home in Murrumbeena, was (like Heide) a popular bohemian gathering place. He is pictured with wife and fellow artist Yvonne Lennie, brother David (a potter), friends Matcham Skipper (a Montsalvat jeweller and sculptor) and Myra Skipper and Heide habitué (Tucker’s wife) Joy Hester.