All 54 lots found buyers, even, Sidney Nolan's 1955 Ned Kelly series ripolin on composition board Glenrowan 1955 (Lot 18 ) which failed to generate any interest when offered for $600,000 to $800,000.
Auctioneer Roger McIlroy appeared stunned as he attempted to work on to the market the picture Fairfax bought at Sotheby’s in 1996 but found no interest among the 150-gathered in the room, nor the dozen phones.
When the auction wrapped after 90 minutes, with every other lot having been sold, it was announced that a buyer for Glenrowan had been found. The bargain hunter paid $100,000 below the reserve, $610,000 including buyers’ premium.
Buyers’ agents were out in force, with David Hulme sitting directly in front of John Cruthers as both bid on the first lot, Roy de Maistre’s attractively-priced 1924 seascape The Beach (Lot 1 ) which eventually hammered for $190,000 to a phone bidder.
It was one of numerous artworks to sell for many times the conservative estimates ascribed by Deautscher and Hackett.
Fairfax died in January aged 83 and the executors of his estate have said all proceeds from the sale will go to The James Fairfax Foundation. Everything was listed to sell and the former owner’s name and savvy were not factored into the estimates, which accounted for so many powder keg results.
Ralph Balson’s 1953 abstract oil on composition board, Constructive Painting, (Lot 8 ) generated furious bidding before being hammered down to a buyer in the room for $480,000, four times its listed reserve and a new artist record.
Look out for a rush of Balsons coming to market after the previous top price paid for a work by the artist was $140,000 hammer at Christies in 1998 for an earlier (1945) Constructive Painting.
The night’s most expensive artwork was cover lot, Eugene von Guerard's 1861 Mr John King's Station, 1861 (Lot 10 ) a landscape said to depict Gippsland, Victoria with indigenous inhabitants in the foreground and white settlers behind.
The von Guerard sold for $1.95m, including premium, to Hulme, acting on behalf of a private collector, after bidding bounced from him, to elsewhere in the room, a phone bidder and back to Hulme again.
That price is the equal second-highest paid at auction for a work by the pioneering landscape painter.
Russell Drysdale's The Bar - Albury c1942-43 (Lot 4 ) achieved the highest price for a work on paper by the artist selling for $105,000, or $128,100 including the premium.
Fairfax's sculptures were listed at the back of the catalogue but that didn't mean they missed out on attention, with only a handful of people scuttling into the cold Sydney night before the sale wrapped at 8.30pm.
Colin Lanceley's generous abstract machine fashioned from carved wood and metal, Atlas, 1965 (Lot 44 ) set a new auction record for the pop artist to sell for $48,000 hammer, $58,560 with the premium.
Inge King's Dervish II, 1991 (Lot 45 ) maquette set a new high price for a maquette when it was hammered down for $50,000, more than three times its $15,000 reserve. The buyer will pay $61,000 Including the premium.
The auction catalogue included many pictures of the former newspaper company chairman who never married, nor had children and did not made his private life public.
Amid the images of Fairfax with more than two dozen named men, such a Jeffrey Smart, Edmund Capon, Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating, there was just one, unnamed woman, with her face turned away from the camera. The catalogue also contained few artworks by women but those that were listed sold very well.
Grace Cossington Smith's oil on composition board interior, Sofa in the Corner 1962, (Lot 2 ) was bought by a man in a pink shirt for $150,000 off an $80,000 reserve.
Next, the artist's slightly earlier Still Life in the Window, 1959, (Lot 3 ) of the same size and listed with a lower reserve of $70,000, attracted a whole new set of bidders with Hulme victorious at $220,000.
Which shows yet again buyers will decide what a picture is worth.
A trio of successively-listed Margaret Preston hand coloured woodcuts hammered for $45,000 each to different buyers.
Mosman Bridge, 1927, (Lot 35 ), Circular Quay, Sydney, 1925 (Lot 34 ) and, Wheel Flower (Lot 36 ) were listed with reserves of $15,000, $20,000 and $30,000 respectively before being deemed equal in the eyes of collectors.
William Robinson was in the 90s the nation's most hyped landscape painter, Fairfax acquired Morning Springbrook and West, 1995 (Lot 30 ), in the middle of that decade and hung the picture at his Bowral estate Retford Park now owned by the National Trust and soon to be opened to the public.
Listed for $160,000, strong competition between phone bidders saw the hammer fall for $280,000, a solid result for an artist whose secondary market prices are yet to live up to the hype.
Fairfax was Oxford-educated and owned a property north of London where he spent about five months each year and which former Art Gallery of NSW director Edmund Capon described as a 'mini museum of Australian art'.
The von Guerard lived there, as did, Arthur Streeton's Minarets Cairo, 1897 (Lot 15 ) which, despite its baroque gold frame, loathed by some and loved by others, hammered for $800,000 to a bidder in the room.
With so many artworks finding buyers at so many times their modest reserves it's difficult to know which ones are deserving of special attention but surely John Olsen's Bicycle Boys Rejoice, (Lot 7 ) a 1955 picture inspired by children in Centennial Park is one.
Fresh from having been exhibited in the Olsen retrospective You Beaut Country at National Gallery of Victoria and the AGNSW, a loan overseen by the fifth-generation media baron while he was still alive, the 62 year-old work is in excellent condition.
Bicycle Boys was listed with a $70,000 reserve but hammered for $260,000 to one of numerous phone bidders chasing it.
The price might come to be considered cheap when the history of the artist, the fact it was owned exclusively by Fairfax and its long history of public exhibition is considered.
