The prices paid at their sale at Hotel Drouot in Paris on 11 November 2017 however are expected to have little bearing on the prices which will be realized in the coming sale. The prices paid in Paris were well over their estimates then, and the estimates for the coming sale are well over those prices.
They were sleepers then, and the presenters are looking for them to become sleepers again if their potential is fulfilled and a predicted result can be called a sleeper.
The drawings are among the first contact depictions of Australian Aborigines and have extra weight by virtue of being Tasmanian – a race which was to have a short life after European settlement.
The private buyer of the works in Paris, who wishes to remain anonymous, has been joined by two heavyweight enterprises in this, which is the second dispersal in 12 months.
They are Sydney rare bookseller Hordern House and the auction house of Deutscher and Hackett which is owned by the former dealer Chris Deutscher and Damian Hackett.
As indicated by the estimates for the coming auction, the parties believe that the prices paid in Paris were well short of the value of the works. Normally this prior exposure might limit the interest in the works. Only a few works in that sale were purchased by other buyers.
However, the modesty of the catalogue produced for that sale was a shadow of that produced for the second event. The Melbourne sale catalogue is an outstanding production by Anne McCormick and Derek McDonnell of Hordern House. The attention to detail of the provenance and history of the works indicates that the original buyer who discovered the cache of drawings believes there is a lot of mileage left in them yet.
The buyer in Paris, a respected operator, wishes to remain anonymous. He is reported to have been the only known Australian in the room when the works were sold although there was also underbidding by London-Australian interests. Fewer people than normal would have been aware of the sale however because Petit is not likely to have appeared on many auction alerts registered with auction houses.
The gouaches/drawings represent one of the only two major caches of Petit and Lesueur works by Nicolas-Martin Petit (1777-1804) and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur (1777-1804) who did them on the Baudin Expedition to Australia of 1800-1804). The others are in the Le Havre Museum
The works are exceptionally well provenanced passing down through the hands of the artists on the voyages until coming into the hands of Count Eric de Gourcuff and his wife Yolaine who consigned them to the Paris sale.
The gouaches/drawings are mostly exceptional in being painted while the artists were in Tasmania and shown to members of the Matthew Flinders expedition which was in Van Diemen’s Land at the time.
The French auction house selling them appears to have particularly undervalued the one work in the offering which was of an Aboriginal woman. The estimate of $US1769 – 2,359 was surpassed by the sale price of $US61,356 IBP. The estimate was $US356. This work is now estimated at $A700,000 to $A900,000 at D + H.
The portrait appears to be the only one of a woman in the catalogue to which no special price was attached when it was sold in Paris. The woman is seated with short cropped hair and wearing a kangaroo skin cloak. It is one of only a handful done by Petit of women.
Another of the watercolour-gouaches with a much-enhanced valuation is a striking profile of an Aboriginal estimated at $A600,000 to $A800,000 compared with a price in Paris of $US92,036 and an estimate for that sale of $US1768 to $2359.
It is a particularly striking profile of a mature initiated man, not only wearing the familiar kangaroo-skin cloak but with a matched headband as well.
The parties to the presentation have been unable to gauge the interest of institutions in the original sale.
Early depictions of Australian Aborigines have been hot property in the Australian market since in its recent recovery from the post 1988 lull in colonial art works and the onset of interest in the frontier wars which were the major focus of a recent exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.
This may also account in part for the decision to hold the sale in Melbourne. A subsequent purchase by the Mitchell Library at Christie’s has fortuitously helped guidance lent provided a basis on which to estimate the value of the works which are among the very few from the expedition which did not otherwise make their way into the collection of the Le Havre.
The offerings represent a comprehensive view of the expedition and include a selection of drawings from Timor.
Also going for the coming sale is the argument that it might never again be possible to acquire works from the expedition.
An observer, Robert Brown meeting Baudin at Encounter Bay said: “All of the natives were painted with woolly hair and C Baudin on being questioned on this…assured us it was really so. The hair of all the figures was of an ochry red in all probability from the ochre with which they colour their whole bodies…”
Material of this nature tends to be subject to examination for pre-emption by French heritage authorities or, if not pre-tempted at the sale, for export licensing. Anticipation of such intervention is said to have helped depress the prices at the original sale.
The forthcoming auction appears to have benefitted for its valuation by the appearance of an Aboriginal portrait by Petit in Christie’s topographical sale in November last year which sold for £164,000.
If the collection were not large enough, Christie’s has another work by Petit coming up in London on 14 December.
It shows a possum on a branch (possibly a common brushtail possum, trichosurus vulpecula) signed 'N M Petit' lower left, inscribed 'Nouvelle Hollande / 1802' on the reverse, the same year the voyagers produced the drawings which are being sold in Melbourne.
The probable provenance is given as “with Maggs Bros, London, 1963. Peter Shand Kydd, the stepfather of Diana, Princess of Wales. Private collection, Germany." It is expected to sell for £70,000-100,000.
Commenting on a report in the Tasmania press the independent Federal member for Denison in Tasmania, Andrew Wilkie, has written to the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison urging he step in to secure the “treasure” for the state. Mr Wilkie has urged the Commonwealth to buy the 1802 portraits of pre-settlement Aborigines, and then donate them to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
“These irreplaceable treasures are about to be sold to the highest bidder,” Mr Wilkie writes in his letter to Mr Morrison. “I ask that, in the national interest, the Commonwealth purchase the items at the sale, and to then make a donation of them to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.” (TMAG). A selection of Baudin drawings from the collection held by the Le Havre Museum was shown at TMAG two years ago.
