“We have been starting to decant” Mr Savill told Australian Art Sales Digest.
The consignment had been made to Sotheby's Australia because of his respect for the acumen of its chairman Geoffrey Smith, with whom he had long associations. The sale would be held the day before Sotheby's mixed vendor auction,
Mr Savill added that the decanting was to start at the top with important paintings by leading artists who have dominated the gallery's stock list.
This means Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman and Ray Crooke in particular. The sale of lesser works would take place later as this market is firing much less. Some works have already been donated to regional galleries as a mark of respect for the satisfaction he has gleaned from the business.
Mr Savill said that he had tired of the paper work that in recent years has been a very big part of running a gallery. At 76 it was time to wind down.
He said that he had produced 115 catalogues of exhibitions and would no longer be active in the market.
Mr Savill has been able to boast with confidence in recent years that he has been the last of the dealers in the traditional mould who have been able repeatedly to draw substantial cheques to purchase works for resale rather than on commission.
He had therefore been able to compete and obtain the respect of the more powerful members of the auction industry which increasingly had entered into similar deals.
Because of the range of artists he has specialised in he has been able to lift the value of his own stock by bidding on works even if not being successful.
He was never shy about publishing his asking prices which sometimes have added a fair wack to the auction price - so strong has been the brand which he has developed over his 35 years of business.
Self-made businessmen have even admired his cheek and even come back after he has seemed to insult them.
Savill comes from a NZ South Island patrician line. That is the Savills of ocean liner connections. His early career is believed to have been marked by success in arbitraging art works and silver across the Tasman.
A career which involved auctioning tobacco in Rhodesia helped him appreciate the quirks of the auction industry and reach a very compatible accommodation as a sole dealer.
Back in Australia he had some dealings with the doyen of the art trade in the 70s, Barry Stern.
He helped Mr Stern move big ticket Impressionist and Modern paintings and the occasional colonial, such as works by Eugene von Guerard that were being coaxed out of the woodwork but which still had a long way to go in the market.
Sometimes he dealt them out of the back of an old Ford Falcon which he drove down to the auctions in Melbourne. But it was with his purchase of the long established Gordon Marsh Gallery that gave him a shell for his business. He obtained first an equity and then full ownership of the business in Double Bay.
He began to go down as a legend in the Australian saleroom 20 years later as the man with the most powerful paddle in the land.
He forged real estate links with extensive property dealings as Hooker's local representative and with Max Herford just across the street, who was a leading collector and property investor.
A treasury of works by Arthur Henry Fullwood was acquired before the artist's full recognition as a major Australian Impressionist. The gallery also has a brisk expatriate trade.
In 1982 he claimed the record for the highest price for the sale of an Australian painting of $350,000 for a J.A.Turner. He sold 70 valuable paintings to one collection alone in Western Australia – the Holmes a Court collection.
These included Frederick McCubbin's Violet and Gold. Other WA entrepreneurs from the West also wrote big cheques at his gallery. In 1988 he bought and resold for $700,000 the most expensive Charles Conder to come onto the market.
Auctioneers fretted if he did not preview a sale or at best still appear at the back of the room where he was rarely shy to be seen to lift his paddle. By the 1990s he was to be regularly and easily the biggest buyer at auction and after auction and just as important, one the biggest under-bidders.
Savill was never ashamed of his prices which often went with a big mark-up. He effectively rebranded his acquisitions and might have called them Savills as that became a much sought after brand among self made millionaires such as John Symonds.
He became friends with Barry Humphries and his cheeky sense of humour lead to his appearance as a colonial policeman at his opening of a Nolan Kelly exhibition at his gallery when, brandishing a rubber truncheon, he directed an interloper from a competing gallery to leave. In 1995 he went on a trip to London on the lookout for Australian paintings and returned with 42. Solo survey exhibitions of John Olsen and Leonard French followed his acquisition of the Andre Ivanyi Gallery in Melbourne.
His purchases direct from major artists who had fallen out of the spotlight adjusted them to undreamed of financial esteem.
His large number 156 Hargrave Street, Paddington terrace, bought in 1995 and extended, remained his premises for the next half century. There was bus stop outside although few of his clients would have needed to use it, and with the jolly cornet mini flag pole usually seen outside ice-cream shops sticking out to show he is open for business.
The building is creaky, he insists. It still has evidence of its previous existence as a brothel in the large array of mirrors upstairs.
