{"id":745406,"date":"2026-06-18T22:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/745406\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T22:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:39:12","slug":"arthur-boyd-tapestries-of-saint-francis-of-assisi-on-display-after-50-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/745406\/","title":{"rendered":"Arthur Boyd tapestries of Saint Francis of Assisi on display after 50 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

For five decades, a collection of 20 monumental tapestries commissioned by one of Australia’s most significant 20th-century artists has largely sat in storage.<\/p>\n

Arthur Boyd never saw the full series displayed before he died in 1999.<\/p>\n

For the first time, the entire collection of tapestries will finally be available to the public at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in Canberra.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Elspeth Pitt says there has long been a desire for the collection to be displayed in full. (ABC News: Lily Nothling)<\/p>\n

“This exhibition has been 50 years in the making,” senior curator Elspeth Pitt said.<\/p>\n

“There’s been a long-held ambition to display them, and we’ve finally after all of these years made it happen.”<\/p>\n

In the late 1960s, Boyd approached a Portuguese workshop about translating his pastels depicting Saint Francis of Assisi into enormous tapestries.<\/p>\n

Between 1970 and 1974, teams of weavers at the Manufactura de Tape\u00e7arias de Portalegre painstakingly brought his vision to life.<\/p>\n

“Each of the 20 tapestries comprises between 4 and 8 million individual stitches,” Ms Pitt said.<\/p>\n

Each work measures 2.5 metres by 3.4 metres.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Vera Fino says the tapestries were all woven by hand. (ABC News: Lily Nothling)<\/p>\n

The workshop’s director, Vera Fino, said weavers worked shoulder to shoulder around the clock, adding 3 centimetres to the tapestries each day.<\/p>\n

“The weaving is all done by hand with no instruments,” she said.<\/p>\n

“In some of the cases, Boyd was in a hurry to get them \u2026 which means they were done in [three, eight-hour] shifts \u2026 so the tapestries could be finished in time.”<\/p>\n

Despite the NGA’s efforts, the names of only some of the weavers involved at the time could be unearthed.<\/p>\n

The artist and the saint<\/p>\n

Ms Pitt said the Saint Francis tapestries were a “big undertaking” for Boyd.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Arthur Boyd, pictured in 1993, died before getting to see the full tapestry series displayed. (Supplied: National Gallery of Australia \/ Gregory Weight)<\/p>\n

“He paid an equivalent sum for the works of about three quarters of a million dollars in today’s money,” Ms Pitt said.<\/p>\n

The medieval Italian saint was a longtime source of fascination for the artist.<\/p>\n

“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 \u2026 but I think for Boyd, Saint Francis was a touchpoint throughout his life,” Ms Pitt said.<\/p>\n

“Saint Francis, like Boyd, was an artist, a poet, an environmentalist, a pacifist.<\/p>\n

“So I think there was a resonance between these two men.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

St Francis cleansing the leper, 1973, is one of the 20 tapestries on display in the exhibition. (Supplied: National Gallery of Australia)<\/p>\n

The tapestries were acquired by the NGA in 1975 \u2014 seven years before the gallery opened to the public.<\/p>\n

While some of the tapestries have been brought out of storage in the past, the exhibition marks the first time the full suite has been hung together.<\/p>\n

“It is quite emotional, in a way, to be able see these works come together \u2014 and to see them in a way Arthur Boyd wasn’t able to,” Ms Pitt said.<\/p>\n

The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For five decades, a collection of 20 monumental tapestries commissioned by one of Australia’s most significant 20th-century artists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[196786,449,458,459,64,63,460,134,41513,358663,358662],"class_list":["post-745406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arthur-boyd","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-national-gallery-of-australia","tag-st-francis-of-assisi","tag-tapestries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}