Boyd Collection Gallery

As a teenager, Boyd lived on the Mornington Peninsula with his artist grandfather, Arthur Merric Boyd (senior), who was a respected landscape painter associated with the Heidelberg School. The young Boyd spent his days developing his technique outdoors and writing devotedly to his artist mother, Doris Boyd. This early, immediate engagement with the natural world provided a starting point for Boyd’s practice and, much later, became a cornerstone in the founding of Bundanon.

Together, these parallel presentations offer a powerful dialogue across generations and perspectives, exploring the enduring influence of the Australian landscape in shaping artistic expression.

Arthur and Yvonne Boyd’s gifting of Bundanon to the Australian people in 1993 was driven by an expansive creative vision. The Boyds felt passionately that the arts are for everyone, and that proximity to art and artists was essential for a thriving and ethical society.

A significant part of the Boyds’ legacy is the Bundanon Collection, which includes artworks by Arthur Boyd and the Boyd family, stretching across the generations. Alongside a substantial number of works by Arthur’s father Merric Boyd, the Collection holds works by Boyd’s contemporaries, as well as the furniture, library and archives of the Boyd family. Today the Collection also holds new contemporary commissions, as well as key works by Boyd that have been generously donated.

“I want Bundanon to be accessible to any Australian”
— Arthur Boyd

The Collection underpins the Boyds’ vision for Bundanon as a unique ‘working arts centre’, supporting the development of arts practice and research across all disciplines, and enabling public access to the arts. Reflecting its unique bush and river setting, the Boyds also sought to encourage an appreciation of the intrinsic value of landscape and the natural environment in our lives.

The Collection offers a window into the philosophy and practice of one of Australia’s most iconic artists.

It reveals Arthur & Yvonne Boyd’s commitment to their family’s artistic legacy, to the physical landscapes of the Bundanon properties on the Shoalhaven River, and to supporting and furthering creative practice across mediums. 

Each year the Collection continues to grow and since 1996 an additional 1,000 works have been added from artists in residence, weaving contemporary practice into the story Bundanon upholds, of the Boyd family and their historic legacy.

This important story, forms a research archive and a reference point for Bundanon’s past, present and future.