Merric Boyd

William Merric Boyd, known more as Merric Boyd (24 June 1888 – 9 September 1959), was an Australian artist, active as a ceramicist, sculptor, and extensive chronicling of his family and environs in pencil drawing. He held the fine mythic distinction of being the father of Australian studio pottery. The Boyd family of many generations includes painters, sculptors, architects and other arts professionals, commencing with Boyd's parents Arthur Merric Boyd and Emma Minnie a'Beckett Boyd. Boyd's brothers were Penleigh, a landscape artist, and Martin, a writer. His sister Helen Read, a navy wife, enjoyed taking to painting late in life. He and his wife, Doris, raised noted Australian artists, painters Arthur and David, and sculptor Guy.Their eldest daughter Lucy's ceramic painting benefited greatly from her unique inheritance. Subsequent generations of Boyds are or have enjoyed their rightful approaches in the arts perceived around them. Background The second of five children of Arthur Merric Boyd (1862–1940) and Emma Minnie à Beckett (1858–1936), both established painters, Merric Boyd was born on 24 June 1888 in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda, in Victoria. Arthur Merric Boyd and family were supported financially by Merric's maternal grandmother Emma à Beckett. It was Emma's fortune, inherited from her father John Mills, an ex-convict who founded the Melbourne Brewery, that allowed their family to live comfortably. Boyd lived in Sandringham where he was educated at Haileybury College until he was eight. The family moved permanently to the family farm at Yarra Glen and Boyd attended Dookie Agricultural College with aspirations of turning his hand to farming; and then he considered entering the Church of England as a clergyman, spending time studying at St John's Theological College, Melbourne; later Martin Boyd's good available material for his award-winning 1955 novel, A Difficult Young Man. Career