The latter clearly had been included to give the sales bulk an associational premium, although Lanceley had an uncertain but worked upon social following.
His presence among Australia's top 20 modern artists is also not widely appreciated. He was a slow and methodical artist, but by no means lazy.
Although Lanceley put the hours into his work he failed to become a must-have in the trade.
There just were not enough works around for dealers to promote him, his technique being laboured.
Leonard Joel's head of art, Sophie Ullin, said that there was still modest interest in the premier Lanceley, A Midsummer Night's Dream, a 1985 oil and mixed media estimated at $50,000 to $70,000 and one of the rare works in which Lanceley was confident enough to use the colour black.
The two Lanceleys, with combined upper estimates of $120,000 accounted for most of the value of the sales total pre-sale estimates of $320,000. This was comfortably exceeded despite the failure of the two Lanceleys to sell.
The sale total was $492,000 hammer ($600,240 including buyers premium). There was a deluge of buying on the Internet and from artists' wives and their families and home decorators for decorative items of which the star lots were oyster plates.
The 390 lot sale was 95 per cent sold by number and 140 per cent by value. Only 18 lots were left over.
This was an encouraging result, but the crowd had come for the crockery rather than the Lanceleys and other marine inspired ceramics were also in demand.
Oyster dishes, into which oysters fit neatly, are extremely difficult to buy even in their modern variants although restaurateurs appear to have more success than private people.
A set of six 19th century English majolica oyster dishes soared way beyond their $400 to $600 estimate to make $3000 or $3600 with the buyer's premium.
The specimens, whose desirability has been noted in previous eBay auctions would have gone to America if past experience is anything to go by. Told that they were available, a Double Bay matron complained: ”We have to go to Surry Hills to buy oyster plates?.” Yes indeed, for there was no point in going to Peters of Kensington, as a recent order supplied from Paris came minus any oyster plates.
David Jones, with its much touted food halls had none of the new ones either.
Lanceley's collection, as per catalogue, advanced Joel's, a Melbourne firm eager to obtain a standing in the Sydney market only marginally because of its international eclecticism.
The artist himself had favoured Mossgreen with major Oriental consignments from his collection.
A single Nolan, the biggest name in the market for Australian art which most auction houses are pursuing, went unsold. Instead Lanceley had works by people like the accursed Leger, or as auctioneer John Albrecht pronounced it in a classical Australian manner, Legerr.
But he was clearly identifying Leonard Joel's with the old Joel's which he had bought from the Joel family.
Few attendees at the old Joel's were surprised by some malapropisms such as Deciduous (Desiderius) Orban Geronimo (Girolamo) Nerli to which Legerr was not quite up to scratch.
From a collection of paintings which must have included a few swaps, a dark dull sous-bois by Jean Dufy (Lot 67 ) from the now Australian owned Louise Whitford Gallery in London made $22,000 hammer or $26,400 with buyer's premium against estimates of $8000 to $22,000 to a buyer registered in the room.
Lanceley, who spent much of his life in London was a keen buyer of modest examples of modern British art and top specimens of the Grosvenor School.
His estate did very well from Dorrit Black's Elizabeth Street, Sydney (Lot 60 ) a 1939 coloured linocut which nearly doubled its top estimate of $12000 to make $22,000 hammer, ($26,400 with buyer's premium).
It was purchased from a Josef Lebovic devoted to the artist whose auction record was set by Bonhams in London last year with The Eruption at £47,500 then $101,689.
Currency movements have favoured British buyers but a small corner of Sydney in the Lanceley-owned print would not have had the same global appeal as an unidentified volcano.
Two bidders were determined to acquire French lanscapes by Rupert Bunny which have been a drag on the market at $5000. The $1500 to $2500 estimates were seductive, but the $14,000 (Lot 72 ) ($16,800 with buyer's premium) and $13,000 (Lot 73 ) ($15,600 with buyer's premium) and paid was totally unforeseeable.
Frank Weitzel's Abstract Design disappointed at $5000 hammer or $6000 with buyer's premium (estimate $6000 to $8000) but colourful as it was, it was as titled, abstract and abstracts usually suffer as against identifiable life shapes in the sale of works of art.
French artist Andre Lhote's colour lithograph Bathers on the other hand soared from the estimated $450 - $650 to $3200 ($3840 with buyer's premium). But nice to see well known overseas artists doing well at a Sydney auction wherever it went.
An Eileen Mayo Art Deco hand coloured print by an artist more readily associated with the commissioned postage and travel art work made $3800 hammer (Lot 121 ). The only other known is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London which attributes it to the artist. Can-can dancers a la Chirico cavort on a set reminiscent of the film Metropolis.
Titled La Chatte and dated circa 1928, La Chatte was a lively Paris joint - sadly the kind of place we might beset enjoy in reproduction than by attendance in future.
The offering to a full house was a very eclectic collection of the type you might expect to be put together by a collector who bought from establishments such as Josef Lebovic's, Barkes and Barkes, and Stephen Scheding as well as fossicking around the secondary auctions.
The studio in which the Lanceleys lived and he worked was sold recently for $4.5 million so the perjorative references to Surry Hills are no longer justified.
But in the 1980s it was a different matter. It had cost the couple $425,000.
