The Boyd family is an Australian family whose members over several generations contributed to the arts in the fields of painting, sculpture, pottery, ceramics, literature, architecture, poetry and music. The Boyd family is considered an artistic dynasty.
Family tree
The family is descended from four diverse immigrants to Victoria:
*Arthur Merric Boyd married Emma Minnie à Beckett. Both were already individually established in society as painters. They had five children, four of whom became prominent in the Australian artistic world. When their children had matured, married or settled elsewhere, Arthur Merric and Emma Minnie Boyd set down a modest family estate within the outer Melbourne suburb of Murrumbeena where they lived for the rest of their lives.
** William Merric Boyd, potter, married Doris Gough, painter. Doris and Merric Boyd, newly married, found their home there, at Murrumbeena, naming it "Open Country," establishing a continuance of artistic tradition to the name Boyd.
****Laurence Hatton Beck, layman, wayfarer and journeyman.
****Robert Hatton Beck, potter/ceramist, married Margot Gardner and they had two children.
****Paul Hatton Beck, musician
***Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd, painter, married Yvonne Lennie, painter.
****Polly Boyd, artist and painter
****Jamie Patrick Boyd, painter and sculptor
****Lucy Ellen Boyd, painter
***Guy Martin à Beckett Boyd,early poet, potter, sculptor, married Phyllis Emma Nairn.
****Lenore Boyd figurative sculptor, married Ronald Eades, potter and painter, and had two children.
****Sally Boyd
****Derry Catherine, owner-operator of a graphic, web, and multimedia business, married Vuthichai Satianyot, and Michael Evans. Derry and Michael had three children.
****Kirstin Doris, writer of children's literature, married John Murray, graphic designer, and had three children. Kirstin married Ken Harper, drama teacher, playwright, gymnast, and circus trainer.
****Ben
****Charlotte Beatrice Magdalen, potter and ceramist, married John O'Donohue, digital technician. They had two children.
****Martin Duncan Gough, writer and Spanish translator, married Paulina Derbez, violinist, and had one child.
***Mary Elizabeth Boyd, early age paint and pottery acquaintance, a chronicling photographer from 1960's. Married firstly, November 1944, John Perceval, painter, potter, and sculptor, and had four children. Mary married secondly, in 1978, Sir Sidney Nolan, painter, becoming Lady Nolan.
****Matthew, painter, married Jutta, three children.
***John à Beckett Penleigh Boyd, painter, wartime pilot, then commercial aviation pilot, married Anne Davy.
***Robin Gerard Penleigh Boyd, architect and writer, married Patricia Madder, daughter to Læticia, a sister to Doris Boyd.
**Martin à Beckett Boyd, writer.
**Helen Read à Beckett Boyd, late painter, married Neven Read, naval officer.
***Gayner Read, painter. Two sons.
***Susan Read, children Pennie Easton, Ken Easton, Greame Easton.
***Andrew Read, Arthur Read, Rossie Read.
***Prudence Read
It was in 1955 when David Boyd with his wife Hermia returned from a stay of several successful working years as potters in England and the south of France that the conception of this family line was popularised in a display of public relations in the press, magazines and the media that dismayed most family members. David was working full-scale promoting the circumstances of his life for the benefit of the pottery exhibitions of his and his wife's work, and magazine editors found the thick patina of past grandeur as presented to them by David irresistible and pages of glory adorned the 1955 magazines and newspaper articles. From here on, in the family's history no members could think of themselves again as quite so elite or socially removed although in the popular sense as an artistic family the notoriety was never greater. The generations that followed grew up in this imposed social and cultural circumstance.
