After receiving initial art instruction at Madame Pfund’s school, where she created notable watercolors like Interior with Figures, The Grange (1875) during her teenage years, Emma Minnie Boyd furthered her education at the National Gallery School from 1876 to 1877 and again from 1879 to 1888. She is also reported to have studied privately with Louis Buvelot. Minnie began her exhibition career early, showcasing her work with the Victorian Academy of Arts. Her exhibited pieces included An Afternoon Nap (1874), four watercolors including Choosing a Book and several outdoor scenes (1875), and School Girls (1882). She also displayed The Yarra at Heidelberg at the Victorian Jubilee Exhibition in 1884 and exhibited several watercolors and painted terra-cotta plaques at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 1886, the year she married fellow artist Arthur Merric Boyd. Both Minnie and Arthur participated in exhibitions with the Australian Artists’ Association in 1887 and again in 1888 when it was reorganized as the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS). At the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition (1888-89), Minnie showcased both oils and watercolors.
Following the birth of their first two children, the Boyds traveled to England with Minnie’s parents in 1890. In June, Minnie’s father purchased the old a’Beckett family estate, Penleigh. In 1891, Minnie and Arthur each exhibited at the Royal Academy, and in 1892, the family embarked on a European tour. However, by 1893, they learned that several Melbourne banks had failed, resulting in a significant loss of the Mills’ fortune. The family, now including two additional children, returned to Melbourne in December.
With their allowance from the a’Becketts reduced, the Boyds lived in Brighton and later in Sandringham from 1898, where Minnie taught painting to help support the family. In 1907, following the death of Minnie’s mother and the subsequent inheritance, they purchased a farm in Yarra Glen. Minnie continued to paint and exhibited her work in the 1898 Exhibition of Australian Art at the Grafton Galleries, London, and continued to show her work with the VAS for many years.
Although Minnie Boyd is often remembered as the matriarch of a highly talented family rather than as an artist in her own right, her art—from her early domestic scenes, which could be both charming and austere, to her later gentle landscapes—merits greater recognition. Her paintings, except for a few done in England like To the Workhouse (1891, NGV), do not reveal the increasingly strict self-denial she practiced in her service to religion and charitable works. Emma Minnie Boyd passed away on September 13, 1936, at Sandringham.