20 Arthur Boyd Tapestries Unite After 50 Years in Storage

For 50 years, one of Australia's most ambitious art projects has been waiting in storage for this moment.

Twenty enormous tapestries depicting the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, commissioned by celebrated Australian artist Arthur Boyd, are finally being displayed together at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. Boyd died in 1999 without ever seeing the complete collection hung side by side.

"This exhibition has been 50 years in the making," said senior curator Elspeth Pitt. "There's been a long-held ambition to display them, and we've finally after all of these years made it happen."

In the late 1960s, Boyd approached a Portuguese workshop to transform his pastel drawings of Saint Francis into monumental woven artworks. Between 1970 and 1974, teams of skilled weavers at the Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre brought his vision to life through millions of careful stitches.

Each tapestry measures 2.5 meters by 3.4 meters and contains between 4 and 8 million individual hand-stitched threads. Weavers worked shoulder to shoulder in three eight-hour shifts, adding just 3 centimeters to each tapestry per day.

"The weaving is all done by hand with no instruments," said workshop director Vera Fino. "In some cases, Boyd was in a hurry to get them, which means they were done in shifts so the tapestries could be finished in time."

Boyd invested the equivalent of $750,000 in today's money to create the series. The medieval Italian saint fascinated him for decades.

"It may seem strange that this Australian artist working in the middle of the 20th century was so interested in the life of this saint," Pitt said. "But I think for Boyd, Saint Francis was a touchpoint throughout his life."

Both men shared common passions as artists, poets, environmentalists, and pacifists.

Why This Inspires

The National Gallery acquired the tapestries in 1975, seven years before the building even opened to the public. While individual pieces emerged from storage over the years, this marks the first time visitors can experience Boyd's complete vision as he intended.

"It is quite emotional, in a way, to be able see these works come together and to see them in a way Arthur Boyd wasn't able to," Pitt said.

After five decades of patience, Boyd's legacy finally gets its moment in the light.