Webbs’ desire is to do something different in the market here, separate themselves from their competitors and think outside the box. At the very well attended opening of the new premises last week, the new direction was unveiled by Chris Swasbrook, the Chairman of Webb’s.
There seems to be a renewed focus on the customer experience and the staff are noticeably friendly and helpful. At the auction, Jaguar (one of the corporate relationships) ran a chauffer service in their new cars from the parking area to the auction house. There was food served at the auction as well as drinks. Later in the year Webb's plan to introduce new sale categories including print sales, stand-alone photography sales and online auctions for those works priced under $1,500.
All of this sounds great and will be a welcome change to the auction scene in New Zealand but first Webb’s will need to pick themselves up from the disappointment of their first sale.
The catalogue was large in size but low in the number of lots offered, just 41 in total. Many pages in the catalogue were given over to advertising other departments, photos of staff and interviews with artists. With so few lots on offer and with an average estimate price per lot of $55,500, the pressure was on to sell, sell, sell.
Attendance in the room was about 45-50 which is about standard for a Webb’s sale but included lot of spectators from the trade and other auction houses. The sale started well with Gordon Walters, Untitled (Lot 1 ), selling easily on reserve at $30,000 and the two Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup screenprints at lots 3 and 4 selling to the same buyer for $30,500.
The highlight of the sale was the important and early work by Andrew McLeod Tree Time, (Lot 7 ) selling for $61,000 against a low estimate of $35,000. The lot was strongly contested by about three bidders in the room and on the phone and created a new artist record. Good results were also achieved for the Liz Maw, Daughter of Cain, Lover of Judas (Lot 11 ), which sold for $33,000 and the Don Binney, Te Henga (Lot 29 ) for $62,000.
However to say the rest of the sale was disappointing is an understatement. The auction sold 8 of the 41 works under the hammer and although there are some referrals to work with, many lots were passed in with no interest. It’s hard to know what went wrong. The estimates on the whole seemed appropriate, not really enticing but not wildly overestimated either.
A glaring omission in the catalogue however was the lack of provenance mentioned for almost all of the artworks. Apart from the Goldies, which had their full provenance listed, other lots were presented bare of collection information and previous owners. A few had illustration details or exhibition history but nothing else.
Milan Mrkusich, Painting (Meta Grey), (Lot 28 ) had a desirable provenance, having originally been sold by Petar Vulatic the artist’s dealer, to Jonathan Gooderham who then sold it through his gallery Artis in Parnell. It has been in a private collection since than. Strangely the auctioneer announced all this on the rostrum but none of this was in the catalogue which was very unusual and possibly detrimental to the sale of the painting.
Sixteen of the works also had an asterisk next to the lot number, denoting the fact that they were from either ‘trade/ and or party/ and or entity associated with Peter Webb Galleries’. Given that purchasers are often very interested in the background and history of their artworks (especially when dealing with artworks in a higher price bracket) and that trade paintings are often not considered as desirable as paintings consigned from private sources, is it possible that this also contributed to the lack of buyers?
Despite Webb’s best efforts to move forward and take the company in a new direction, there will clearly need to be a focus on buyers and stock-getting as that was what seemed to be what was lacking at this sale. To have a successful sale with such a small number of lots requires attractive, ‘come hither’ estimates which are tricky to obtain in such a competitive market.
If this isn’t possible, there needs to be a wider variety of stock to bring in more buyers. In this sale, a quarter of the lots were comprised of artworks by two artists, Ralph Hotere and Shane Cotton. If you as a buyer were not interested in these two artists and Bill Hammond (three of his works were there), you might feel as if there wasn’t much for you.
The Sotheby’s model in Australia works on this boutique feel and generally they do very well as they have a good range of stock from the traditional to the contemporary and the items are meticulously researched and provenanced, thanks to the curatorial emphasis of Sotheby's Australia Geoffrey Smith. If Webb’s intends to travel down this path they might need to look further afield to the presentation by the auction houses they are seeking to emulate.
The sale cleared $415,350 (incl bp of 17.5%) which is 17% by value and 19% by lot.
