Donald Friend has emerged as one of Australia's most "internationally friendly" artists.
At the sale by Deutscher and Hackett of "Works from the Donald Friend collection including the property of (his one time, many years' companion) Attilio Guarracino" at the Paddington Town Hall in Sydney on October 27, more than one third of the value of the offering went overseas.
With the strong support of buyers in Bali the auction grossed $1.17 million ($986,810 hammer) against low estimates of $838,500. Estimates do not include the 22 per cent buyers premium.
The overseas interest is justly explained by the artist's travels and residencies in Nigeria, Sir Lanka and Bali. Indonesian buyers in particular are becoming more wealthy by the day.
Curiously, many of the lots from the largely Melbourne collection were moved to Sydney for sale because of the greater interest in the artist said to be there, will end up in Bali.
The international flavour of Friend's following took a richer turn at the sale when Philippe Auguier, a Frenchman with a museum there the Museum Pasifika with its dedicated Donald Friend room was a major buyer. His purchases were headed by the Friend self portrait with a mirror and the mirror that went with it.
Friend's Balinese stay made him a central figure in the celebrated school of art that Dutch exile Walter Spies established during the 1920s.
It appear that while Australian dealers and collectors used to scan catalogues of auctions of South East Asian art held in Singapore and Djakarta, Indonesian buyers and other residents of South East Asia are now seeking out his works in Australia, making Friend a rare saleroom commodity – an Australian artist who could be arbitraged in reverse.
While the one big buyer, number 830 accounted for some of the key action, another South East Asian Museum was also said to be buying.
Auctioneers Roger McIlroy and Scott Livesey deftly contended with the diverse and scattered bidding in the room and on the Internet which may have been responsible for any hint of hesitancy at what very easily could have been an exuberant occasion.
Chris Deutscher said that at least two art dealers from Indonesia attended the sale, while the Australian decorative arts trade including textile dealer Ross Langlands participated.
Twenty one works were purchased by online bidders, all from overseas buyers, with the inevitable time lag as the bids melded into the fray and 83 lots went to the telephone making it a lengthy day.
The interest generated at the D + H sale suggests that the subjects, seductive charm and decorative quality of Friend's work and his place in Indonesian art is widely appreciated despite some controversy.
Another "Australian" with a different slant on sexuality, Roland Strasser, is now almost automatically arbitraged to sales in Singapore and Djakarta.
Deutscher says bids also came from further afield than Bali, and not just from Australian expats.
With 58 of the lots unsold - the sale included numerous Indonesian textiles and carvings of less certain value – the auction was "only" 113 per cent sold by value and 80 per cent sold by volume.
Friend was no "Margaret Olley", although a much more important artist. He has been dead for many years and no art market these days favours the dead. Mr Deutscher said the estimate limits were easily breached on at least 34 occasions and most notably his Self Portrait in a Carved Mirror (Lot 29 ) which was sold for $55,000 hammer ($66,000 with premium) against an estimate of $15,000 to $20,000.
The buying spread over to Friend's earlier Australian subjects when a Hill End period painting made $24,000 hammer to a Erwin Katz, a client of Tom Silver's.
But Katz also felt the Balinese fever when he gave $65,000 for one of the most unusual of Friend's work, a textile appliqué triptych of Balinese batiks.
