Country squire turned antiquarian book dealer Mr Franklin Brooke-Hitching clearly agonised over the disposal of his collection but finally consigned it to Sotheby's. This at least means that over 40 very important Australian items could make their way Down Under scattered through four London auctions.
The consignment is a leg-up for Sotheby's UK in the Australian travel market after the significant strides Christie's has made in it over the past 20 years.
Sotheby's has had its sights for many years largely on the expatriated South African market leaving Christie's to colonise Australia.
Both of the global auction houses are now servicing their markets very successfully from overseas with only a franchise and a representative office respectively Down Under.
With a big multi-vendor auction by a Melbourne bookseller in Melbourne two days ahead of the first Brooke-Hitching auction, the Australian antiquarian book market has received a big wake up call at a time more modest books are being given the great heave ho and public libraries will not even accept them as gifts.
The antiquarian book market has been gathering cobwebs over the past six or seven, years with no big sales of note and mixed vendor sales very thin.
Some big deals have been done but mostly private treaty business conducted by Christie's with libraries and museums - and one eminent Australian collector.
Lately these have been turning up trumps with new artists identified, as in the Earl of Derby's collection sold by Christie's for $7.1 million to the Mitchell Library in Sydney.
The Melbourne book sale on March 24-25 organised by dealer Mr Peter Arnold at Ormond Hall is a $1 million plus mostly Australian affair but may be of more interest locally than Brooke-Hitching, as it is predominantly Australian and much of it pictorial.
One of the lots, letters and drawings by the colonial artist bird painter John Cotton, is likely to fly as it too brings a new forgotten artist to the fore given the interest in the Cayley family of bird artists last year. Cotton is well documented by Dr Joan Kerr in The Dictionary of Australian Artists ...to 1870 and his work is very rare in private hands.
Cotton (1801-49) compiled several European travel journals before he came to Australia in 1843 and leased Doogallook station on the Goulbourn river. He was one of Australia's earliest photographers and could also claim to be Australia's resident birdman.
He put together Native Birds of the Port Phillip District of NSW 1843-49. This was not published, however, until 1977 largely under the direction of Lady Maie Casey, the artist's great grand daughter.
Lady Casey, whose long association with Christie's, has recently come under the spotlight as a result of a book on the artist Loudon Sainthill, wrote “Many letters survive from the Early Settlers but none perhaps so fully describe every aspect of bush life as do John Cotton, and through the windows of his drawings we are able to look upon the scenes of his times.”
The one Cotton lot in the offering which has been consigned by descendants of the artist through another line of the family, includes 34 pen sketches of birds and 56 autograph letters which appear to provide an invaluable picture of life in Victoria before the Gold Rushes.
The Brooke-Hitching Collection part 1 (of four) is expected to make just over £1 million but as a fabulous sum (could it have been close to £5 to £10 million- ?) was asked for the whole.
While there will still be some glamour attached to the dispersal, whatever sum is raised is unlikely to be show much regard for the cost in time, insight and buying involved in putting it together.
Melbourne antique dealer, Julian Sterling, recognised the value of "completion" in the frantic bid he made to complete his stamp collection before his death.
Although he bought for auction, he knew it would have looked much better and make more sense to buyers if there were fewer empty gaps in the collection.
His beneficiaries are selling the collection in three separate sales over the next few months.
Like books but less wieldy, stamps usually are accumulated in large numbers and require incredibly intensive cataloguing.
Mr Sterling added the reputation of savvy dealing and a good eye to his collections provenance and he created several of these well-thought out collections over his lifetime.
Another vendor with a disposals problem and "trapped" in his collection is Trevor Kennedy with a collection said to be worth $26 million requiring item by item valuations by museums and heritage authorities before it can go on the road to its Singapore or any other overseas buyer.
Brooke-Hitching will at least have the consolation of the celebration of the collection in the published catalogue in four parts. In these hard times there are not many buyers around with the interest and ability to write large cheques for books or related material.
Kerry Stokes is one lone such individual although his purchase of the Royal Geographical Society's works from Thomas Baines expedition to Australia is still unconfirmed.
While the alphabetically catalogued Part One of the Brooke-Hitching collection includes Cook (as in Captain) there are other explorations of equal or arguably grander importance represented in the sales that do not relate to Australia, Raleigh and Drake for instance.
Australian dealers will probably not go along to the next sale on March 27 (although this has 40 lots of varying importance which are estimated at £343,000-£404,500.that relate to Australia in some way, but the second of the sales, which with the lots continuing to be arranged alphabetically, includes explorers with names beginning with F and that includes Flinders.
The Australian rare book trade appears unanimous in its acclaim of the condition of the works in the collections but then they were called upon by him to find much of the Australiana content.
Under the Captain Cook entries is the first-ever printed map to show New South Wales, Victoria and the east-coast from 1772 (est. £80,000-120,000 / $AUD150,000-220,00).
This map was commissioned by Sir Joseph Banks, a botanist who had joined Captain Cook on his first voyage of discovery to the Pacific in 1768.
Sotheby's says that it never been previously offered for public sale before, and as the other two known copies of the map are kept in museum collections, this is possibly the last opportunity for public institutions or collectors to acquire such an important piece.
Joseph Banks destroyed most of the copies after Captain Cook was appointed to be the leader of the next Royal Expedition to the Pacific. He had hoped to lead in his place.
The Australian Art Sales Digest is advised this specimen was offered semi-publicly by Mr Brooke-Hitching at a Brisbane book fair nearly 12 years ago and purchased immediately (before it became fully public) while two Australian dealers vacillated at a price of about one tenth of its current estimate.
Subsequent research has established the map's importance which, following the great map exhibition at the National Library in Canberra, could be very fully recognised
