It was one of the two top lots which failed to find a buyer this week, heightening the rough passage Australian art is having in London at the moment.
The annual auction had been moved from Christie’s South Kensington rooms to give Australian art a higher profile and to benefit from the rapturous applause expected for the exhibition, Australia, at the nearby Royal Academy of Art. The first such survey in many years, Australia has been widely panned.
The sale grossed £3,865,850 including buyers premium, against an overall estimate of £5.472 million to £7.806 million, with 44 of the 75 (59%) of the lots selling. The McCubbin was largely responsible for the weakened total.
A fervent fan of McCubbin, Mr Ron Coles was presumably not in the running for Bush Idyll, nor the other McCubbins which were weakly bid in the sale.
The Idyll is also enormous and even the grandest McMansion would have problems accommodating it.
It also did not for me have the seductive powers of his other big pictures and might be best at home as the highlight of a regional gallery fed up with taking in donations under the Cultural Gifts Program.
But they do not have the money to buy. It also had am interesting provenance. Mr David Waterhouse was publicly associated with its purchase in 1998.
The second big disappointment, Russell Drysdale's Old Larsen, (Lot 51 ) was bought in at £450,000 against estimates of £550,000 to £650,000. But then Old Larsen was not the type of character you would invite home for tea and scones.
The Drysdale market misses admirers such as the late Robert Holmes a Court and more recently, Mr Rod Menzies who was at the sale but did not bid on anything.
A third major work, John Glover's Ben Lomond from Old Mr Talbot’s Property Four Men Catching Opossums, (Lot 11 ) was sold for a hammer price of £1.5 million against estimates of £1.8 million to £2.5 million to a telephone bidder.
Translating into £1,741,875 with premium this should not have been too much of a disappointment. Like the two completely failed top lots it was also considered to have a very high estimate.
The Glover estimates were helped by the work’s superb condition and excellent provenance. It had come through the old Tasmanian family, the Talbots of Malahide and in recent years had been on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland.
With its vigorous depiction of Aboriginal life in the early colonies it was also expected to have been of interest to British Glover-lovers like author Jeffrey Archer who is said to have 14 works by the artist. Sir Bernard Hintze the Australian philanthropist is also believed to have shown an interest in the painting.
Yet Glover is arguably not quite in the same league as a painter like Eugene von Guerard who has taken colonial Australiana to its highest peaks as well as painting them.
These three disappointing results may be due to anxieties by Australian buyers about the GST payable when the works enter Australia and also to the extra amounts payable for them due to the fall in the value of the Australian dollar.
Australian buyers also tend to be too consumed about the state of the economy, pulling out of the market at the faintest whiff of financial stress.
The uncertainty caused by international quantitative easing or bank note printing has the nervous nellies in a complete stupor.
But there are also other more logical factors in the hesitancy. Most of the best works from the colonial and impressionist period are already in public institutions. A distinguished collector who attended the sale, Mr Jim Clemenger, said he was there only to observe, as his walls were full.
A leader of the old guard, Miss Sue Hewitt, is one of the great troopers who were battling away in the business in the 1970s when Australia’s links with the global art world were cemented.
This week she put some life into the proceedings by paying well over the estimate for a very under estimated work.
She gave £690,000 hammer (£829,875 IBP) for Lysterfield (1978) (Lot 66 ) by Fred Williams. This price handsomely eclipsed the £300,000 to £500,000 estimates. The picture evidently has some untold story attached. It certainly was inspired by the Williams' personal experience of a bushfire.
Sue Hewitt's biggest client is Ros Packer.
Another trooper, Sydney dealer Mr Denis Savill, who has been a big supporter at this Christie's annual event , was again a big supporter bidding on 15 of the works and acquiring at least half a dozen of these, if not others, knocked down in the room.
These buys included a chalk sketch of Charles Blackman's companion Al Alvarez (Lot 40 ) for a modest £3000 hammer against £4000 to £6000 and a black chalk Girl Playing (Lot 41 ) by Blackman for £28,000 hammer against the £28,000 to £30,000 estimate.
The roll call of one after another of the lower priced mostly traditional paintings failing to sell was sad but Ms Hewitt and Mr Savill showed there was life in the old guard yet.
A couple of obviously professional but unknown bidders in the room also appeared to be acting for what is left of this old trade back home and perhaps in the rare book world. Brisbane' s Mr Philip Bacon is still in business. (His artist Jeffrey Smart did well at the sale).
Other unsolds include the much over estimated self portrait by the colonial artist Benjamin Duterrau (Lot 7 ) at £120,000 to £180,000 and passed in at £95,000.
The only one in a bunch of works to fly was predictably An Infant of Van Diemen's Land (Lot 10 ) at £60,000 (£73,875 IBP) against the estimate of £30,000 to £50,000.
New Zealand art attracted a more uniform level of support. A late portrait of a Rawara chief by Charles Goldie (Lot 6 ) sold for £260,000 (£313,875 IBP) against the estimate of £200,000 to £300,000.
Some traders back in Zealand wanted to deny Christie's a great find in an admittedly heavily washed watercolour, A Group of Maoris at Wanganui, with Mt Ruapiehu Beyond, (Lot 5 ) preferring to believe it a later work by some other artist on the grounds of changed topography and style.
Catalogued as the work of John Alexander Gilfillan, it would not surprise if the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington turned out to be the buyer anyway.
As specialist Nicholas Lambourn said, if it were not by Gilfillan who else could it be by?
The sale's entourage included Mr David Jaffe, Ms Patricia McDonald, Mr Jeffrey Smith of Sotheby's Australia with a couple of buyers in tow, Mr Roger McIlroy, ex Christie's specialist Mark Poltimore who is now at Sotheby's, a couple of expats who bought a picture at $50,000 to $60,000 and a couple of antiquarian booksellers (by the look of them). The auctioneer was Mr Andrew McVinish, an Australian with special interest in furniture, who accomplished the difficult task of drawing bids from the crowd with some aplomb.
