The oil on canvas was bought by art trader Mr Andrew Crawford and is expected to re-appear at a Singapore auction.
The painting's brutal subject matter, only intimated in the bloodless work, is likely to be better appreciated in lands where this “sport” (cockfighting) has been better accepted than in Australia.
The chief executive of Lawson's, Mr Martin Farrah, said the work sold for a lot more than the consignors believed it to be worth.
A more pleasant Australian introduction to Bali is expected to be met with at the Paddington Town Hall, Sydney on October 27 when 350 plus lots associated with one of Strasser's Australian colleagues goes under the hammer.
Fifty of the paintings in this sale will not have to appeal to the arbitrageur willing to re-offer them outside Australia for them to find their full value.
Deutscher + Hackett is offering paintings, sculpture, textiles and krises on behalf of the 83 year old Attilio Guarracino.
Attilio was the love of Donald Friend's life and 50 paintings by the artist acquired during this friendship will be the focus of the sale.
Attilio was an island boy of 19 when he met Australian artist, Donald Friend. Their relationship took many forms over the years until Friend's death in 1989 and suggests a longstanding bromance.
More than a dozen of those years were spent in Bali, where Donald Friend lived like a rajah.
The same kind of frenetic bidding that made the sale of the Margaret Olley collection by Mossgreen in Sydney so well supported, are likely to be in play. The deep association of the two men ( Donald, of course, being gay), will draw out a different crowd, into which the auction house has been making big inroads.
Its presence of its rooms on two of the gayest streets in Sydney and Melbourne (Oxford and Commercial Road) appears to be paying off. With its big enclosure of single people with high discretionary incomes, the gay community has to be a big force in the Australian art market.
D+H was consigned the collection of Lex Aitken and Alfredo Gonzales in Sydney for sale on August 28 because the two owners who were in a life partnership had dealings with them before.
The couple were also close through past dealings to Ronan Sulich, the Australian representative for Christie's. Decorative and overseas fine arts collected by the duo are about to be shipped to London when CITES certificates have been acquired for the lots containing rosewood and ivory.
These permit the works to be internationally traded. D + H does not have its own decorative arts specialists.
The decision to sell the works in the Attilio collection in Sydney recognises Friend's pre-eminence in the city.
This does not eliminate the possibilities of sleepers among the weapons and textiles, many of which have some age to them
An international revaluation must have been in the minds of the bidders on a large bronze Buddha from the collection which offered in an introductory low level offering of works from this source when it made $5500 at John Williams auction on August 24.
John Williams has 13 chests of books on the fine and decorative arts still to come through his rooms from the Aitken collection – a tribute to the depth with which they approached their collecting.
A very different sort of linkage, that of Friend and Roland Strasser, was present at Lawson's Annandale sale when Strasser's 83 by 65 cm Cockfighter was offered.
Strasser was a member of the Merioola Group in Sydney with Friend, Justin O’Brien, Arthur Fleischmann Peter Kaiser, Roland Strasser and Mary Edwards, artist and later noted costume designer, Jocelyn Rickards.
Strasser who was not only a painter but also the author of The Mongolian Horde, had lived and worked in Tibet, Mongolia and Bali.
Toronto art dealer Odon Wagner showed his work at the Tresors Singapore Art Fair, in 1997. It consisted of works from Bali, Tibet and Japan and Mongolia.
Wagner's fair booth was devoted entirely to Strasser whose work skyrocketed on Indonesian buying of his portraits of Balinese girls.
The Indonesian buyers, thought to be mainly members of the rich local Chinese community, seem not the least bit perturbed that the artists were white colonists.
Mr Wagner's interest in Strasser arose from his discovery of the work in Montreal and Toronto where members of Strasser's family had set up residence.
Reflecting this Canadian connection, art auction records show that several paintings by Strasser have come up for sale at Waddington's in Toronto. The most recent sale by Sotheby's Australia in Melbourne also included one of his works.
Mr Wagner's interest in the artist was sealed when he discovered that he and Strasser, and Strasser's father the sculptor Arthur, had studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Mr Wagner had works priced at up to $S85,000 (Fishing at Bali).
For the Australian buyer, works like the conte on paper self portrait of the rugged profiled artist were to be had for $S3,000.
Arriving in Sydney in 1945 Mr Strasser told the Sydney Morning Herald (May 21, 1946) that he and his wife Enrica were virtually prisoners in their own home in the mountains of Bali for four and a half years.
They had travelled 30,000 miles in China, Mongolia, and Tibet, during which he gained material for his book, Mongolian Horde, and for canvasses which were exhibited in England and in Europe.
He claimed to be one of the last people to see the Mongolians before the Bolsheviks swarmed into the country and destroyed their way of life.
"We had a home in Vienna, but always we go back to Bali," Mrs. Strasser said.
Strasser had a one man show in the David Jones Art Gallery and showed works at the Little Karma Gallery in the Blue Mountains with further exhibits in Melbourne at Georges Gallery and Seddon Galleries.
One critic snapped “There is a passing sense of rhythm, and once or twice of sensibility by implication, but it remains a surface manifestation, something picturesque.”
Affluent members of Indonesia's Chinese community who drive the market clearly think there is a bit more to his work.
An oil portrait of Eric Kennedy the CEO of Australia's Associated Newspapers was passed in at Lawson's failing to exceed the $2000 to $3000 estimate.
