The coronavirus lockdown has shrunk the scale of auction offerings to date in 2020 to half that of the same period in 2019. Both buyers and sellers have been hesitant. So, it takes a brave auction house to put up their best offerings and brave sellers to release their treasures to such a shrunken market.
Deutscher and Hackett must have been concerned when the wave of a second lockdown hit a week before their Melbourne sale. But although the lockdown made viewing difficult, it prepared buyers for a new unprecedented world of internet and phone bidding from the anonymity of their lockdown burrows with a mobile in one ear and a hand on the mouse. Buyers could follow their quarry on the net, and although the pace was slower, bidding seemed to have been done with a sense of deliberation.
Only 7 of the 128 lots did not sell on the night (so selling 95% by lot). This is the definition of auction success in the covid age. This writer particularly noticed 5 artist records on the night with the following hammer prices: Williams (Lot 7 ) $2,300,000; Rooney (Lot 4 ) $36,000; Rae (Lot 11 ) $220,000; Heysen (Lot 14 ) $490,000 and Tillers (Lot 41 ) $68,000. There may have been more. Further statistics showed that at least 66 of the 128 lots (more than half) had hammer prices at or above the top of the estimated range for the lot. This is a huge sign of market confidence.
The auction house put up quite a diverse offering in two parts: Part I featured a further capsule of contemporary art from the Gene and Brian Sherman Collection amongst a varied section of major Australian and International Art; Part II featured contemporary urban Aboriginal works and traditional barks from the Peter and Renate Nahum Collection of Aboriginal Art.
The sale began with spirited bidding on a visually safe and technically competent Cressida Campbell woodblock (Lot 2 ) settling on a hammer price of $55,000 over a top estimate of $20,000 after battles between several phones. A beautiful cubist oil on cardboard from the Titirangi series by New Zealand master Colin McCahon (Lot 8 ) settled within its estimated range with a hammer price of $110,000. The good buying continued with the current interest in overlooked Australian female painters from the Victorian and modern eras—Isobel Rae left Australia during the 1880s in the established tradition to study in Europe. Her charming yet vigorous image of a young child surged to a hammer price of $220,000 against a top estimate of $50,000. The large Hans Heysen (Lot 14 ) oil had records written all over it, with gum trees and extraordinary shades of summer twilight. An internet bidder beat the phones to set the record straight at $490,000 hammer on a perfectly reasonable top estimate of $200,000. With more of an environmental drive to it, a Tom Roberts superbly painted ‘Dandenong Landscape’, 1925 (Lot 15 ) with total tonal control settled in at $290,000 hammer over a top estimate of $180,000.
In the central section of the auction, Capsule V from the Sherman Collection showed mixed results with their offering of major challenging contemporary works. Here, the large but uncharacteristically heavy rendering by John Olsen of ‘Nolan at Broome’ (Lot 33 ) failed to find a buyer against a steep lower estimate of $180,000—as did the darkly echoing ‘Lookout No 1’ (Lot 37 ) by New Zealander Shane Cotton which was passed in below $80,000.
Contemporary works of great interest that bucked this trend were the magnificent Imants Tillers’ multi-panelled ‘Waterfall (after Williams)’, 2011 (Lot 41 ), a previous Wynne Prize winning painting, that sailed to a record of $68,000 hammer over a top $45,000 estimate. Congratulations Imants. Similar kudos is due to Gwyn Hanson Pigott’s 1999 Limoges porcelain arrangement ‘Still Life with a Brown Bowl’ (Lot 43 ) selling for $38,000 hammer over an $18,000 top estimate. He had a pioneering drive for ceramic vessels to be considered as Art with a capital A. Looking every bit contemporary with a capital C, like it was made yesterday, the punters failed to notice the superb still life pencil drawing c1930 by Frenchman Pierre Bonnard (Lot 74 ), which sold for an absolute bargain of $4,000 hammer. This was one of the treasures from the estate of the canny art dealer Ray Hughes.
The final fifty lots of the auction comprised Peter and Renate Nahum’s revelatory collection of Aboriginal art. Their impeccable taste placed the absolute beauty of traditional bark paintings alongside contemporary urban works. From Utopia, Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s ‘Merne (Everything)’, 1996 (Lot 84 ) shone with brilliance in this contemporary context, selling for a well-deserved hammer price of $275,000 over a $200,000 top estimate. This masterpiece compares effortlessly with Cy Twombly’s major paintings—both communicate all humanity through their mark.
The Nahum’s collection ranged from the majestic ‘Tributaries of the Ord River’, 1991 (Lot 77 ) by Rover Thomas (selling for a mere $190,000 hammer well below the perfectly reasonable upper estimate of $300,000) to the contemporary Robert Campbell Junior’s ‘Blue Light Man’, 1982 (Lot 90 ) (selling for $30,000 hammer on a $15,000 upper estimate). It is a tribute to their curation that they placed these interests side by side.
More than thirty eucalyptus bark paintings from Maningrida, Yirrkala and Western Arnhem Land all found new homes. Some were important masterworks, and some had humble under $5,000 estimates. All were greeted with enthusiasm. The seriously beautiful and important John Mawurndjul ‘Ngarrt - Short-necked Turtle’, 1989 (Lot 78 ) with natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark established the commitment from buyers that endured till the end of the auction. It sold for $95,000 hammer over an upper estimate of $60,000. We can only hope that this sets a precedent for the general market level of bark paintings to increase. These exciting objects, that are so viscerally connected to the land through not only the cultural forces of generations so painstakingly rendered on them, but also the fact that they are bark—they are part of the fibre of the land itself.
All prices shown are hammer price, unless otherwise indicated by the inclusion of IBP (includes buyer's premium).
