Another prodigiously talented member of the Boyd family, David Boyd was born in Melbourne in 1924 and went on to study music at the Melbourne Conservatorium until conscripted into the army in 1942. On leaving the army in 1944 he switched from studying music to studying art and enrolled at the Victorian National Gallery Art School.

His first distinction was as a potter, briefly, with the Martin Boyd Pottery and then with his wife Hermia. The pair held their first exhibition in Sydney in 1948 and during the fifties and sixties came to be regarded as the leading potters in Australia.

David Boyd's first serious painting commenced with the Explorer series, a group of symbolic paintings of the Australian explorers. A storm of controversy erupted in Australia over these paintings and also over his subsequent work, which was based on the tragic history of the Tasmanian Aborigines. "Monoliths" a painting from this series won him the Italian Government Art Scholarship Prize for Australia in 1961.

David Boyd moved to Rome with his wife and family in 1962 and he continued painting this series. Paintings from "The Tasmanians" were exhibited to critical acclaim in solo exhibitions in London and Paris in 1963. Since then David Boyd has held many major exhibitions throughout Australia, England and France.

David Boyd's work has been included in numerous international exhibitions and is represented in major public art galleries, museums and university collections throughout the world.