Exhibition themes Nebuchadnezzar

Nebuchadnezzar In The Wilderness

In Boyd’s Nebuchadnezzar paintings he was blazing a trail in the contemporary art world through his highly inventive responses to religious subject matter.

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (602–562 BC) was a successful ruler who engaged in many military campaigns. Best known through biblical accounts in the Old Testament Book of Daniel, he is purported to have become carried away with his power to the point of thinking himself God-like. Punished for his pride and arrogance, he lost his sanity and was cast into the wilderness for seven years, undergoing many trials and tribulations.

Boyd’s paintings on this theme relate to his fascination with the visionary art of William Blake and to memories of graphic biblical stories read to him as a child by his grandmother. Imagery from the past was enmeshed with his fears and concerns about contemporary realities: the atom bomb, nuclear testing and the self-immolation of protesters at the time of the Vietnam War.

Some of Boyd’s Nebuchadnezzar paintings shown here were exhibited to great acclaim in his 1969 Retrospective in Edinburgh. The story of a king who metamorphoses into a hybrid animal-being, or a pilgrim on the outer realms of society, was natural fodder for Boyd’s artistic inclinations. Having arrived at a subject of great interest, he explored an array of interpretations over a period of several years, eventually completing over 100 works of poetic insight and imaginative potency.