BOYD, Sergeant Theodore Penleigh

Salvage. Pictures and Impressions of the Western Front [by an Australian Artist, Sergt. Penleigh Boyd, Electrical & Mechanical Mining Co., A.I.F. (cover subtitle)]

London, The British Australasian, 1918.

Quarto, [48] pages with a frontispiece portrait of the artist and 20 full-page line illustrations plus the pictorial front cover.

Overlapping pictorial card covers (lettered in red) a little bumped and creased at the extremities, with a few tiny tears to the overlapping edges; spine chipped with slight loss; front panel a little faded and marked; occasional foxing (mainly adjacent to the covers); a very good copy of a very rare item.

Theodore Penleigh Boyd (1890-1923) was a member of the distinguished and talented Boyd family of artists, writers and architects. 'In 1915 Boyd joined the Australian Imperial Force, becoming a sergeant in the Electrical and Mechanical Mining Company, but was badly gassed at Ypres and invalided to England. In 1918 in London he published "Salvage", for which he wrote a racy text illustrated with twenty vigorous black and white ink-sketches of army scenes. Later that year he returned to Melbourne and in November held an exhibition at the Victorian Artists' Society's gallery. Although he suffered from the effects of gas, he held one-man shows in 1920, 1921 and 1922; his work, both water-colours and oils, sold quickly. In September 1922 he visited England to choose a collection of contemporary European art for a government-sponsored exhibition to Australia.On 28 November 1923 Penleigh Boyd was killed instantly when the car he was driving to Sydney overturned near Warragul ... In his short career Penleigh Boyd was recognized as one of Australia's finest landscape painters' ('Australian Dictionary of Biography').

Dornbusch 224; not in Fielding and O'Neill.

Item #134070

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