It is expected to make between $180,000 and $250,000 and if it does it will prove to have been one of the great Australian art finds.
The work last appeared on the open market in March, 1989 at Phillips in London.
The painting has re-appeared on the market due to its consignment by former Melbourne rag trader and property investor Mr Denis Joachim.
Mr Joachim has given the work to Sotheby's in what appears to be a compensatory gesture after withdrawing his Australiana library from sale with the company.
He told the Australian Art Sales Digest's Terry Ingram that he could not bear to be apart from his library. The library, which includes ephemera and photographic material and has been handing around Sotheby's now for nearly three years.
The rare book world has been heavily anticipating this much awaited dispersal.
The books had been fully catalogued by Melbourne rare book seller Mr Peter Arnold who is understood to have been fully reimbursed for his work. The books and associated photographic and ephemera constitute one of the most outstanding Australian libraries ever amassed by a private collector and its sale has been much awaited by bibliophiles and collectors in many related areas. A fourth generation Australian, Mr Joachim has seldom missed a big book sale, buying at the Rodney Davidson auctions over the past decade and at Sotheby's sale of the Longueville Collection in 1993.
Auctioneers usually charge fees if consignments are withdrawn but Mr Joachim's has been withdrawn before any auction date had been finalised so he may escape the kind of stoush that auctioneer Mr Tim Goodman had with the Anges when three years ago the Sydney erotic goods retailer pulled their collection from the market.
But if he can turn up more finds like the Neill painting, Sotheby's Australia should be very happy.
The collection was also one of the last big consignments made through Mr Tim Goodman to Sotheby's Australia before ownership changed two years ago and therefore may not be as close to the current management's heart as some others.
The chairman of Sotheby's Australia, Mr Geoffrey Smith insists that the company will still be selling books. He might well add that a lot of the intensive work involved in handling the book collection has been done. Book sales still involve low margin items whereas the thrust of the exclusive brand Sotheby's has been to lift the return on lots sold.
In place of the collection, Mr Joachim has consigned a work that gives depth and variety to Sotheby's art sale. Sotheby's Australia appears so confident that the work will sell that it has put it as lot number three in the catalogue – which is where lots need to fire to set the momentum of the sale. The offering gives some balance to the sale when most of the offerings at auctions are modern or contemporary.On the wall at Phillips in London in 1989 the work appears to have gone little noticed as antiquarians contact by Australian Art Sales Digest's correspondent have difficulty in recalling it and do not remember the price. But it was offered when the 1980s art boom was on its last legs. The art market was to peak at the Trout sale in Brisbane in June 1989, but the share market had collapsed 18 months earlier and some of the big operators had already packed their bags for foreign shores.
Since those days the market has demonstrated the basic rarity of works like this as many lots of major importance have been taken off the market for permanent collections at ascending prices particularly during the run-up to the Bicentennial of settlement in 1988. The work has been put in a totally different perspective since it was offered at Phillips (on March 10 1989) thanks to a four column over two page entry on the artist in Professor Joan Kerr's Dictionary of Australian Artists published in 1992 in which a photograph of the work appeared.
It is signed and dated "R Neill 1828" - and is by Robert Neill ((1801-1852) an until recently little known but very competent painter as well as printer by trade.
Sotheby's now describes it as having "profound historical significance" in a very rare three page entry on the work in its catalogue of its sale of Important Australian Art in Sydney on August 27 by Dr David Hansen who acknowledges the assistance of another eminent Tasmaniana buff Mr John McPhee in the compilation process.
The painting was exhibited by Robin Hood's Gallery of Fine Arts in Somerset House in Hobart Town in March-April 1851 and has been seen only once publicly since then.
It was lot 49 in Phillips London sale of Topographical Colonial and British Paintings on March 10, 1989 where it sold for $US9420 (about £6000) according to Davenport's Art Reference & Price Guide - a steal for Mr Joachim who conceded many of the works he collected were by lesser known figures like Neill.
The work, an oil on board, is also small at 23 by 30 cm and so would not have shouted "buy me" at the viewing. he nine Aborigines in it are not flatteringly rendered.
Only one small painting by the artist is believed to have since sneaked through the salerooms - and at a regional overseas auction at that.
But there are three drawings by him in the Mitchell Library, Sydney and 67 watercolours of fish and reptiles found in WA waters were officially presented to the British Museum in 1845.
Mr Joachim began collecting seriously 40 years ago with the sale of his rag trade business and the purchase of a secondary copy of Captain Cook's Voyages.
