It seems only yesterday (in fact it was at Christies in 1998) that celebrity footballer/commentator Sam Newman purchased Smart's slightly smaller Guiding Spheres (Homage to Cezanne) II, for $288,000, and the press had a field day. Clearly Sam's investment was a wise one.
The previous record of $1,260,000 for a work by Jeffrey Smart had been set at Deutscher and Hackett's sale of Important Australian + International Fine Art Auction in Sydney on 27 August 2014.
On a technical level, the Menzies sale enjoyed a strong clearance of 84% by lot, with a total hammer of $6.1 million, or 7.6 million IBP, with many lots going above the top of their estimated range.
Six artist records were broken at Menzies very festive-feeling sale, in a standing-room-only auction held almost 20 years to the day after their first venture at Leonda by the Yarra, Hawthorn, under the Deutscher-Menzies flag. The breaking of so many records at the anniversary sale is a fitting tribute to the Menzies' understanding of the secondary market: they have grown the top end of the market, bringing international works of note to Australia's shores; they have brought reputation to the artists that they have presented; but, in particular, they have contributed to the wide appreciation of the value of the work of living artists such as Peter D. Cole, whose frieze-like sculpture Landscape-Procession 1996 (Lot 12 ) was just $500 shy of the artist's record, bringing $30,000 including premium.
In Thursday night's sale, the six records were smashed at all market levels and across the range from post-impressionist to contemporary, so it is worth pausing to particularly reflect on them. On the Sands 1920 (Lot 2 ) was a spectacular and large post-impressionist work by secondary market heavyweight Elioth Gruner: it smashed previous records to reach $275,000. Photographs and digital images do not do this work justice. It literally shimmers with virtuoso brushwork that many contemporary youngsters could well examine to 'bone up' on how to handle a brush. The Gruner was part of a series of works from the collection of the descendants of Sir George Tallis, and the proceeds will be used to set up the Mike Tallis Award in Statistics at the University of New South Wales.
On the contemporary front, the reputation of Del Kathryn Barton continues to grow in stature with her 2017 exhibition The Highway is a Disco at NGV Federation Square. Unsurprisingly Satellite Fade-out 7, 2011 (Lot 26 ) reached more than $243,000, after a war between several room bidders and the phones. The work is numbered from her seminal Satellite Fade-out series first shown at Roslyn Oxley 9 in 2011. Barton's work hits the zeitgeist with a strong female voice, while works such as Norman Lindsay's more ribald Gypsy Laughter c1940 (Lot 77 ) failed to find a buyer in this social media time of the 'me too' movement.
Further records were achieved for other recent works. On the Way to Prosperity (Lot 93 ) by Peter Smets (Lot 93 ) achieved $28,750. One-time Archibald winner Euan Macleod reached a record $40,000 with his seven-panel piece Seven-NZ/Oz, 2010-2012, (Lot 42 ) that would be enough to empanel an entire room.
At the end of the sale, Tasmanian legend Michael McWilliams gave us a treatise on the Tasmanian Tiger with the oil on board Meeting on High Ground, 2001 (Lot 133 ) and this iconic work indeed met with a high realisation of $17,500.
This Menzies sale was very successful in all quarters, but there were the inevitable lots inexplicably passed in. These were often from the international front, and as this writer has said before, we need to get out more and appreciate international trends simply as a matter of course.
A delightful Henri Cartier-Bresson (Lot 62 ), a photographer at the 20th Century vanguard of 'catching the elusive moment', failed to reach its $6000 reserve, and yes, it was signed. Passed in at a similar level was Paris-based installation artist Thomas Hirschhorn's Walk through Fire, 2007, (Lot 63 ). His site-specific ramblings sit well with the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and The Tate in London, but apparently not here.
For the bargain of the night we need look no further than the $5000 realisation of Daniel Boyd's Untitled 2012 (Lot 103 ). This museum quality work is of a similar period to and scale of the work currently on view this week in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. There it provides a welcome respite to the somewhat force-fed diet of the Sydney Biennale.
Buyers have not tired of John Kelly's renditions of William Dobell's cow sculpture artifice: Kelly's small watercolour Upside Down Cow 2001 (Lot 43 ) fetched $13,750 over pre-sale estimates of $3,000-$5,000. The unique painted bronze Two Cows in a Tree 1999 (Lot 48 ) also sold well at $43,750. Somehow the act of painting the bronze fits well with the Dobell saga of painting cow shapes on sculptural props. But when the artist zooms in too close so that only Dobell's camouflage netting and its shadow are evident on the rump of the animal, the illusion is defeated. Netting and Shadows 1995 (Lot 45 ) was passed in well below the estimated range.
