In response to his query as to whether anyone knew of the whereabouts of the studio of the English artist who spent some years in Australia the residents said yes, but only a few weeks earlier they had put the works out for the garbage collectors. The works appeared to include landscapes and garden views much loved by collectors. There was no obvious way of retrieving them.
Cowden's family were from Beaufort in the Western district of Victoria where his father had a garage/petrol station. The area was highly prospective for art fossickers, being the home of rich graziers and von Guerards. One other big miss was Sir Arthur Streeton’s Golden Summer, Eaglemont prised out of a local farmer’s collection by Chris Deutscher and Hedley Earl. The work became the most expensive Australian painting to change hands in its day. Cowden was like a fisherman with such stories of the ones that got away.
However, Cowden with his Russells and MacKennals vied with Neville Healey for the title Mr Arbitrage and he carried it off with a distinguished presence that he should have been nicknamed Mr Debonair. He repatriated many works including a parcel by David Davies after talking Britain’s Cheltenham Galleries to swap its holdings of that artist for some French works. He secured access to casts for bronzes and is said to have organised posthumous works. This was a not uncommon practice, but it meant the sculptor was not around to bless them, a mark of authentication.
Affable and stylish Cowden was there in his red Ferrari to greet members of the Australia trade holidaying in Majorca, building a friendship with Denis Savill and Nevin Hurst of Hobart among others, and entertaining generously. He loved showing his visitors how fast he could drive the car. He was Mr Affability and had an infectious grin.
He was not afraid to push the envelope, removing an art nouveau Arthur Streeton seascape to reveal a harbour view beneath. He tracked down Australian works from the collection of Thomas Stamford of Stamford University which he found hanging in Rickey’s Restaurant in Palo Alto. He put a lot of his finds through art consultant Jon Dwyer who at that time was working in the Art Department of Leonard Joel, when that auction house was holding thrice yearly 1000 plus lot sales in the Malvern Town Hall in the 1980s.
There was little conflict with Neville Healey- also of arbitrage royalty - as the latter’s arbitrage took European works in the opposite direction. George Grunhut overlapped with Cowden but Grunhut the Hungarian owner of the Blue Boy Gallery in South Yarra secured most of his treasures from among the Arthur Boyds and Sidney Nolans which had made their way to London.
Grunhut took up residence at the Hotel Europe in Mayfair at the beginning of the northern summer every year for much of the 80s and advertised for the works in London’s quality dailies; He usually came out well ahead finding plenty of homes for his discoveries.
Cowden’s focus were the Colonial and Impressionist painters and the early moderns many of whose works had found their way to Britain or America, or who had gone there to paint alongside members of the St Ives and other art schools.
Cowden was not always spoken of kindly by other traders but Jon Dwyer and Leigh Murphy attributed this to trade envy. Securing the collection of Perth entrepreneur Laurie Connell for sale was a coup – albeit almost a disaster when the property next door to his house in Moncur Street holding the collection caught fire. The fire burned through a church but was extinguished just before it reached the house.
Cowden admits that he often sold too early. However, serendipity and a good eye appears to have led him to a number of kills on which others capitalised. Mr Cowden's coups include the purchase of a painting by Dobell court case litigant Mary Edwards for $4,250, which later sold for $130,000, and a painting of a boy on a pony by the colonial artist William Strutt, which he bought for $5,000 and which later sold for $189,000. These paintings, however, each changed hands a couple of times after Mr Cowden had bought them.
Cowden put the money from the sales of art into Majorcan concrete, but development was a bumpy business as his co-investors, a motley spread of the art trade, found out as he laboured to deliver on their retirement property. But then real estate is a tough business in Majorca and the GFC hit property prices. The sale of a Duterrau painting helped save the day as Cowden sought to complete obligations and turn canvasses into concrete.
The art market was shifting from the traditional he loved to contemporary. Nor was he keen to get into retail. He had a short spell early in his career with the Bartoni Gallery with backing from Charlie Zucker who featured in the US dollar plates in the Yarra story but the gallery in South Yarra was acquired by the then young Laraine Diggins. Our heart goes out to his partner of the last seven or more years Sarah, who we are still attempting to contact.
