In November of that year 1973 Sotheby's held an auction on behalf of the Dobell Foundation at the about-to-be opened Sydney Opera House, of works from the estate of the artist.
A single artist sale, conducted by Sotheby's legendary auctioneer Peter Wilson, it raised more than $300,000 which was about three times what was expected.
Sotheby's UK held a series of sales thereafter but failed to capitalise on the success of the auction by holding of Australian art sales. Also, Bruce's forte was jewellery.
In the 1980s he held sales on his own ranging from furniture to jewellery.
Sotheby's was content principally to regard Australia as a source of material for its sales in London. Some major consignments were indeed forthcoming including A View of Paestum and oil painting by Antonio Joli which Rutherford found on a house visit.
The owner had no knowledge of the find which might otherwise have headed for an op shop,
It made the then grand sum of $11,000 and found its way to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena in California.
Not until 1981 did Sotheby's take on the Australian auctioneering industry with local art sales, then and now the industry's main revenue earner. A reminder of the response to the Dobell sale undoubtedly helped.
Sotheby's wake up call came from its tribal art specialist in London, the Australian Robert Bleakley and fellow Australian Georgina Hewitt.
There appeared to be a comfortable unofficial arrangement which ceded Australia to Christie's and Canada and the other major European former colony South Africa to Sotheby's.
Rutherford was as happy to leave Sotheby's after 15 years with the company, as he had been to join them in the early 1960s, his son Wesley says.
Rutherford had changed the emerging global auctioneer while in Australia, but was rebuffed and took his growing family with him to London to make another bid for a placement and was appointed a porter with the endorsement of Sotheby's chairman Lord Westmoreland and like many before and after him worked up the ladder of expertise.
In 1969 Rutherford was told he had to go back to Australia to take on the job as representative, its local operative Reg Longden having found the job frustrating as it seemed mainly to involve London sale catalogue distribution.
Even when the first Sotheby's Australia was launched, the then British company hesitated to develop it, Bleakley and others buying a minority interest with their own money.
Rutherford was the son of an orchardist and the and the youngest of 11 siblings, He left school at an early age to train in the nearby town of Kyabram as a watch maker.
For a while he combined the Sotheby's representation with his own antiques business but left to found Rutherford in Collins Street where it has traded at different addresses since.
One of its three shops specialises in pearls only doors away from its headquarters. A daughter Ruth helps run the pearl business while another sister Colleen helped run the traditional jewellery shop in the 1980s and 90s. Other family members of the 3rd generation continue to work in the business. Another daughter Margaret is spearheading a charitable drive for birth control in Africa.
Wesley, the youngest of the siblings, runs the group. Wesley recalls his father saying that he won the Dobell sale because of two supplicants he gave the price the foundation wanted to hear for a Dobell which they asked him to look at.
Christie's had already sold works for the foundation but Sotheby's came up with the venue which Robert Brooks had hoped to secure for the launch of Bonhams in Australia nearly 30 years later.
The sale was too much of a success . It was an excess with prices paid for Dobell's Biro drawings- dubbed “Dobell's doodles" - never fully recovering from the four figure prices for which they sold.
It used the local branch of its UK global auditing firm for the sale accounting, with some occasional glitches.
Sue Hewitt, who then worked at Christie's Australia, found one of the buyers at the desk having difficulty verifying her identity as a bidder. Janet Holmes a Court was vouched for and allowed to bid.
Bruce, who achieved the grand age of 88, was an austere man in an industry where a swing to bling began to take hold in the new millennium, much of it in the saleroom which he had left.
Some high prices were written by the new Australian-owned Sotheby's Australia franchise in stand alone jewellery sales.
It is now a franchised operation formed as a result of Sotheby's withdrawal from Australia in 2008.
Rutherford was an upright gentleman as might be detected from the naming of his son and was a leading figure in the Uniting Church. This year he celebrated 63 years of marriage to Joan whom he met through the church.
His funeral was held on August 20 at the Surrey Hills Uniting Church, Melbourne.
