What some in the trade saw as a 'sleeper' - a work which has been underestimated by the auctioneer, and often with an incomplete or incorrect description, allowing scope for arbitrage - it was more a case of a low estimate being set for the work.
Estimated at $20,000-30,000 Cassis (lot 80) was painted in 1923. The catalogue included extensive provenance on the work. It had been brought to Australia in the 1920s, from where it went into the collection of J. L. McDonnell.
It had been included in an exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in 1929 and at the Art Gallery of NSW in 1938. Potential local arbitrageurs would require only rudimentary computer skills to ascertain that works by Shukhaev appear regularly on the international market and Sotheby's have sold 14 works between 2004 and 2010.
A similarly sized work by the artist to that offered by Davidsons, Picnic in Cassis, painted in 1925 sold for 57,600 GBP in 2004, while Landscape in Cassis sold for 45,600 GBP in 2007.
Robert Davidson reported that there were 11 phone bidders, as well as room bidders, and bidding started at $20,000 and quickly rose to $60,000.
However what the internet giveth, the internet can also take away, in this case possibly the profit of the intermediary spotter, as the work was sold to direct to an American collector bidding by phone. In pre-internet times a local dealer would probably have made the purchase and then passed the work to the overseas dealer.
Elsewhere in the sale, the highest estimated work in the sale failed to sell. Emily Kame Kngwarreye's, Yam Story, My Country, (Lot 198) had an estimate of $40,000-60,000
The sale raised around $320,000 at hammer, prior to referrals being finalised, with 196 of the 266 works offered being sold
