Penleigh Boyd's life was tragically cut short in a car accident at the age of 33, however in his short life he produced a significant body of landscape paintings. Most notably subject matter incorporating wattle which symbolized Arcadian ideals as much as a sense of Australian nationalism. Boyd also has an exceptional artistic pedigree, belonging to the famous Boyd dynasty. He was the son of Arthur Merric and Emma Minnie Boyd and, in addition to his visual legacy, his son, Robin Boyd, was a distinguished Melbourne architect.

Prodigiously talented, he was taught at the Melbourne National Gallery Drawing School by Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall as a teenager. From mid 1914, Boyd lived at Warrandyte on the Yarra River, Melbourne, interrupted by his war service from 1915 until March 1918 when he was invalided out. In Warrandyte, Boyd found idyllic environs, which inspired much of his best work.

Well-known art critic and gallery director, James MacDonald, rather verbosely wrote at the time that 'About the roads and over the hilly paddocks of Warrandyte, up and down the river banks, loaded in season with heaping yellow blossoms, Boyd wanders looking for subjects.'

William Moore, in his seminal The Story of Australian Art, observed that 'The wattle...is not frequently painted, the reason being that its bloom is rather difficult to paint. Probably the best wattle pictures we have were painted by Penleigh Boyd.'

A significant pre-war wattle painting by Boyd is Bridge and Wattle at Warrandyte, 1914 (National Gallery of Australia). The Breath of Spring, 1919 (National Gallery of Victoria) and Spring Fantasy, 1919 (Castlemaine Art Gallery & Historical Museum) were painted post-war, in the same period as Wattle on the Yarra. Spring Fantasy in particular is compositionally similar to Wattle on the Yarra.

The striking yellow and green colour palette, what Hugh Grant Adam referred to as '...pure, clear, emotional notes of atmosphere and colour', also reflect Boyd's interest in depicting Spring, which he believed emblematized 'life, vigour and ambition.' Wattle on the Yarra differs from the majority of his wattle paintings as it is bereft of signs of urbanization, peopled only by small children, picking blossoms and used to demonstrate scale.