Only instead of the squatocracy, the strengthening prices were being paid at Bonhams Australia's sale of the Owston remnants and other material for some very fragile looking early Aboriginal identities, writes our special correspondent.
Contemporary Aboriginal art is struggling but paintings of Aborigines by both non-indigenous and Aboriginal artists are finding ready enthusiastic bidders in media ranging from photography to oils.
Collectors with old European grizzlies may now also struggle to find a good home for them and probably likewise best advised to find a gallery for any redundant specimens which will accept them as donations under the Cultural Gifts Program..
As the big spenders have yet to be fully unmasked, it may be too early to say that Aborigines are being invited to permanent tenure in flash homes in Toorak or Point Piper.
But there have been too many high prices like these for portraits, including secondary-rated media such as watercolours and photography, to rule out a new respect for Aboriginal Australia.
Prices paid for the five watercolours by Richard Browne (1776-1824) on Sunday continued the trend of the three Brownes in the first part of the Owston sale in June, when a new record of $44,000 was set by Killigrant.
These are factual, if slightly primitive images of a proud people which may still fall short of full financial recognition.
The most significant pointer to the escalation in prices was probably the $45,000 ($54,000 with premium) against the really-for-sale estimate of $15,000 to $20,000 for the page sized 30 x 19 cm Ginato, An Old deform'd Female Native well known about Sydney by the name of Pussy Cat and Humpy Mary. (lot 420).
The same work, an immediate new record which was to be broken straight away by the next lot, had sold at Sotheby's in Melbourne in August 1989 for $12,100.
Warren Anderson, whose family company was the repository for the collection, continued to buy into 2002.
Mr Anderson, showing his unstinting enthusiasm, paid an reputed average of around $20,000 each for the works, mostly on the advice or through Sydney rare bookseller Tim McCormick.
The second Browne (lot 421) in the sale, a full length portrait, Burgun, revved up to $50,000 hammer ($60,000 with premium) against $15,000 to $20,000 estimate,
The price was paid in frenetic bidding by the director of the Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Mr Ron Ramsey who was sitting in the front row with Lisa Slade the NRAG's curator.
The gallery also bought Coola-benn, Native Chief of the Ashe Islands, Hunter River NSW (lot 427) for $60,000 ($20,000 to $30,000) because of its geographical relevance.
The two works may set out on an almost immediate tour as they would link in to the splediferous exhibition Rare and Curious, inspired by the Mitchell Library's Macquarie Chest, curated by the gallery and set to travel to the S H Ervin Art Gallery in Sydney.
At least one private collector has been taking advantage of the presence of such colonial material on the market, as the media magnate Kerry Stokes was the biggest private buyer at the last Owston sale in March.
He is touted to be the most likely bidder who secured the majority of the lots on offer as he has bought aggressively in this area.
The prices contrast sharply with the $18,000 given by mystery buyer 500 for John Linnell's oil (lot 354) showing two members of a great non-indigenous dynasty, Portrait of Corrnelia and Frederick Darling.
Given that children are best seen rather than heard, portraits of children have usually tended to sell well.
But this particular work might have made double in the run up to the Bicentennial of Settlement in 1988.
The prices are being paid despite Browne's known use of stencils to make multiple copies. They are rarely one-offs.
Newcastle's second buy, a near half length portrait, however, was signed, which is rare and therefore had an added value.
For a total of $465,700 telephone bidder number 5104 bought six of the remaining watercolours including an atypical double portrait of a man and a woman which made $108,000.
Although selling for more than four times the top estimate one of the best buys must have been A Marsupial Mouse, (lot 349) by the important Victorian animal painter Edward Lear .Very endearing for a rodent of its species which is a byword for insignificance, this went to the telephone for $13,200.
A piece of Australiana which might have been well admired in the earlier boom but now down on its luck, James Fraser Scott's tall oil painting (lot 419) A Settler Collecting Water which showed just that with tall gum trees and a horse went to private buyer, Paul McCabe for $1600 ($1920 with premium) against estimates of $6000 to $10,000.
Norman Lindsay’s tend to defy the time warps into which other traditionals fall into but the three offered sold, with The Dancer with Feather Headdress (lot 430) in his least successful medium, oils, was hammered for $155,000, or $5000 more than its lower estimate, to make $186,000 with buyer’s premium.
Some of the serious dealers and collectors who promoted this recovery market in the 1980s have now departed and Lindsay's eroticism is beginning to look very dated and its kitsch accentuated.
Mr Anderson's Old Master collection, with an interest in blood sports which has not transferred into a more politically correct age has not maintained its old momentum and was what now may appear wisely sold off in the 1990s.
But in keeping with fresh-to-the-market finds, Jeffrey Smart's Athenian Suburb (lot 451) showing an empty villagescape of slabbed, windowless houses and a giant bottle sold for $132,000 against $50,000 to $70,000.
The work had been a gift from the artist circa 1968 and had passed down by descent to the vendor.
Only one of the seven contemporary Aboriginal art works sold. It was paradoxically a late
vertical Clifford Possum Feu de Brouse (Bushfire) of 2008 depicting a famous myth of the Warlugulong bushfire, selling for $18,000 (IBP), around the lower estimate (lot 457).
The sale in the mixed vendor offerings of a portrait of one of the few celebrated white South African politicans of yester year by one of the world's greatest 20th century artists for a modest $8400 puts the interest in early little known Aborigines by a primitive Australian in context.
The price paid was twice the estimate but the bronze Field Marshall Smuts by Sir Jacob Epstein was, like Browne's sitters, no beauty and like most sculpture, the 60 cm tall lot would tend to get in the way.
More may be heard of lot 474, catalogued as Florentine School, 17th century, given that someone was audacious enough to pay $9000 for a lot estimated at only $1200 to $1800 by the burgeoning Old Master department in London anxious to make its name in a market dominated by the two big auction houses.
But the subject of this octagonally shaped work, St Catherine of Alexandria was celebrated for her wisdom and oratory and at least subject-wise was therefore a wise buy.
