The response to it was very different to that for the bulk of the Owston collection at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in Sydney on June 25 and 26 by the firm's Australian subsidiary, Bonhams Australia.
Ranging from 18th century mirrors to ashtrays made from elephants feet the Sydney offering more than doubled its lower estimate.
This week's failed lot in London was a large large oil on canvas painting titled Jacob and Esau by the Dutch mannerist, Joachim Wtewael (1566-1638). It was estimated to make £stg400,000-Lstg600,000.($A716,000 - $A1.07 million).
The painting was last offered in the saleroom in April 1992 when it was among 60 works consigned (but few of which were sold) by West Australian property developer Warren Anderson to Butterfields, the Californian auction house handling his gun collection.
Offered simultaneously in San Francisco and Los Angeles in a room in each city of only a dozen or so people at most the best bid was $US425,000.
The head of art at Butterfields, Nicholas Faerrie, claimed the painting was more than a narrative picture.
The painting shows the two brothers feasting. Esau, the cunning hunter, faint from working in the field, has just sold his birthright as the elder to his younger twin Jacob for a pottage of lentils which he is holding in his left hand.
He said that with its sensuous dog and hungry cat in the background the work was all about capitulation to material desires.
This week, once again, and now offered by Adelaide receivers KordMentha on behalf of the unsecured creditors of Owston as part of a property dispute between Anderson and his wife Cheryl, no-one capitulated for it.
With another Utrecht painter's work, Melchior's de Hondecoeter A Cockerel and other decorative fowl in a landscape Owston's consignments to the sale had promised to push the total from the current sales by the Owston receiver (another $1 million sale will be held in October) from an adjusted $13.1 million to as much as a magic $15 million.
The two works were the only ones considered likely to receive a better response from buyers in London than in Australia.
In bidding to secure the Owston collection, Bonhams had also been keen for this stock for its London rooms which compete strongly for business against Sotheby's and Christie's in the Old Master market.
The de Hondecoeter which was estimated at between Lstg60,000 to Lstg80,000 sold for Lstg43,200.
Although the Wtewael appeared in the post-sale list published on Thursday as unsold this may not be the end of the story as many unsold lots are negotiated after the auctions.
Biblical subjects, however, have not been popular in an increasingly secular age.
The work depicted elegant figures painted in a charmingly artificial style and with acidic colours for which the artist is renown and this is also an acquired taste.
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