Art Auction Sale Reviews

Turnover of art at auction in Australia rose modestly from $103.73 million in 2013 to $106.18 million in 2014 in a year which could have been an annus horribilis.

The lift was only achieved however, on a larger throughput with a lower average price than in 2013 and fewer sales highlights.

Not one $2 million plus painting was sold during the year compared with four in the previous year and the highest priced painting in 2014 was a bit of a "loser" writes Terry Ingram.

Menzies’ last fine art auction of the year in Melbourne brought in $8.012 million including buyer’s premium for the 281 lots, selling 68.3% by volume and 78.8% by value. This makes for an Australian fine art auction turnover of $103.93 million in 2014 to date, against $103.73 million in 2013, which notably included the $19.6 million single owner sale of collector Reg Grundy.

Even though the figures from the two final art sales in Perth and one Sydney auction are yet to be included in these results, the 2014 figure of $103.93 million clearly reflects an improvement in art sales at auction for this year.

An Australian sunrise helped keep some of the clouds at bay in the Russian art market when re-offered in London, writes Terry Ingram.

A big Victorian painting of the rising sun, "Russian" artist Konstantin Kryzhitsky's River Estuary with Farm Labourers, an 86 by 141 cm oil on canvas, attracted no interest from the usual players in the Australian market when offered at Menzies Art Brands in Melbourne in July.

The market for contemporary art and women's art has moved on since Chris Deutscher gambled on contemporary art with the opening of a gallery devoted heavily to the former in Melbourne's Drummond Street in the early 1990s.

The gallery caused its owner some financial heartache and by 1994 he had closed it and opened a new one in a Malvern building with an exhibition devoted to the still arguably speculative women's art - admittedly with some emphasis on the other end of the market, colonial.

Both contemporary and women's art – but mostly contemporary women's art - were sources of comfort when his half owned Deutscher + Hackett last week (on November 26) held an auction Important Fine and Aboriginal Art in its rooms in Prahran.

Despite their work being relegated to the back of the catalogue in Sotheby’s Australia’s November 2014 sale of Important Australian & International Art (71% versus 29% in the first half), the small proportion of art by women (24% of 72 lots) helped raise a hefty $900,000 and provided a star performer, when a painting by Grace Cossington Smith double vaulted over its estimate, selling to art dealer Annette Larkin for $671,000 (including BP).

The modest sale of just 42 lots offered some interesting works, and a good number of dealers and consultants filled the room and fought with phone bidders during the hour-long event at Bonhams traditional Moore Park venue. Overall, the sale generated $1.64 million, with 74% sold by lot and 70% by value.

The National Library of Australia (NLA) had to put up a bit of a fight to acquire the Journal of Captain Foley Charles Prendergast Vereker, R.N. (1850-1900) done on the HMS Myrmidion and offered at Christie's sale of Topographical Pictures at its main rooms in London's King Street on October 30.

The opposition was a little unexpected although the ship itself has had associations with skirmishes. Its name in Greek mythology is associated with hired mercenaries and its captain a man who had been promoted after repelling pirates on earlier voyages.

Two Australian expats are back in the limelight again in overseas salerooms, writes Terry Ingram

But some of their work is selling for a small shadow of that associated with it in the past.

Paintings by Bessie Davidson (1879-1965) and aquatints by Martin Lewis (1881-1962) who both separately both left Australia just after the turn of the 19th/20th centuries recently appeared at auctions in Paris and New York respectively.

A large portrait of the Bourbon "Duke of Windsor" has been acquired for $US353,000 by the National Gallery of Victoria at an auction titled The Courts of Europe held by Sotheby's in New York.

Some details of the acquisition, which was made in January 2014 and is already hanging in the European Courts of the gallery in St Kilda Road are contained in the gallery's annual report for the year ended June 30 2014.

The portrait, a 153 by 109 cm oil on canvas is a three quarter length portrait of Don Luis Jaime Antonio de Borbon Y Farnesio, Infante of Spain (1727-1779.)

Last night Mossgreen held one of its most ambitious mixed-vendor art auctions in its ten year history. Twelve months since settling into its new headquarters in High Street Armadale, the auction house has grown in size and scope. The Fine Australian & International Art sale on 28 October 2014, with a pre-sale low estimate total of $3.5 million, was the highest value mixed-vendor art offering by the auction house to date. Although some exceptional results were achieved, the pass-in rate attested to the fact that the Australian art market is yet to fully recover to the pre-GFC economy.

What was once thought of as a faulty acquisition by the National Gallery of Victoria is helping re-enforce a major new trend emerging from the London art scene this northern autumn.

A “disappearing” hand in the NGV's portrait of a man with curly white hair by Rembrandt is now seen as evidence of the creativity and audacity of many of the world's leading artists in their maturity.

The painting, Portrait of a white haired man,  has been loaned to an exhibition  Rembrandt: The Late Works  which is on view at the National Gallery until January 18, its celebrated cut-off hand now a value point.

Australian Aboriginal art received a big tick on the London art market this week although not a jot of it was offered for sale and any immediate pressure for a forced sale was removed.

The pressure on it, which originated in Viennese bathtubs has been removed by the takeover of the museum which houses a holding of Aboriginal art in a friendly collector deal.

What was reported as the most successful sale of a contemporary single owner art collection by auctioneers Christie's, and was held on behalf of the museum, writes Terry Ingram from London.

One of the largest auction crowds in recent memory defied Melbourne’s tempestuous weather in an attempt to secure original works by one Australia’s most highly regarded Modern Masters, Sidney Nolan at Bonham's sale of Important Later Works From The Estate of Sir Sidney Nolan on 13 October 2014. The front page editorial in Melbourne's Age , on the Thursday prior highlighting the bargain offering, ensured a larger than expected turnout. All seats were taken half an hour before the start of the sale and many jostled to get a glimpse of the heated action.

Swann Galleries’ sale of Rare and Important Travel Posters on 14th October in New York may well be the largest offering of Australian travel posters, at least according to Nicholas Lowry, director of Swann’s vintage posters department. More than 50 posters of the 198 on offer are promoting travel to and within Australia. They come from the treasure trove of a prominent Australian collector, and include most of the British posters on offer in this sale, too.

New Zealanders, who seem to have a lot to boast about lately, appear to be well ahead as a source of material in British and Continental salerooms this season. This is despite an enticing Arthur Streeton sold for a goodly sum at a recent UK regional art sale.

But some of the NZ ground, entirely staked by a record setting Maori art piece, may be reclaimed by Australia at the coming topographical picture sale at Christie's on October 30 through the inclusion of a newly discovered ship's journal of Australian exploration expected to make up to $A150,000.

A beach scene, Picnic at the Spit by Arthur Streeton continued this years strong run on the artist's small works when it sold for £145,000 hammer (£176,900 IBP) in Dorset, U.K. on 25 September.

Although the auction house, Hy Duke & Sons of Dorchester did not publish an official estimate, the price is believed to have been comfortably ahead of expectations to the pleasant surprise of both the auction house and its vendor, Mr James Fairfax who was clearing the contents of his long held retreat on the river bank at Stanbridge Mill at Gussage All Saints in Dorset.

A large number of nude and semi-nude figures dominated the Menzies offering of Australian and international fine art and sculpture in the evening sale of 151 lots, set off by four remarkably similar Whiteley nudes prominently displaying their bottoms to the viewer.

Nude offerings also came from Garry Shead, John Brack, Auguste Rodin, Norman Lindsay (of course), Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, Guy Boyd, Pablo Picasso, Phillip Piperides, James Gleeson and Richard Larter.

Two old troopers from the allied fields of art and books put new life into the major annual event in the Australian antiques world-the Australian Antique and Art Dealers Association fair at the Chelsea Room at the Royal Randwick Race Course Randwick at the end of August, writes Terry Ingram.

A third old trooper also chipped in from across the years - if you count a familiar old major on an old canvas that was one of the 44 dealer fair show-stoppers. The portrait of Major James Winniett Nunn on the stand of Sydney Antiquarian bookseller Hordern House drew an almost constant visitation.

The star of the show at Deutscher + Hackett’s auction of Australian and International fine art was without a doubt the cover lot, Jeffrey Smart’s Self Portrait at Papini’s, 1984-85 (lot 11), selling for the artist’s record of $1.05 million hammer, but coming a very close second would have to be Edmund Capon who was hilarious as celebrity auctioneer, ably assisted by professional auctioneer Roger McIlroy.

The night turned over $6.7 million, with 80% sold by volume.

A work considered as Australia's answer to Monet's water lilies struggled at the sale by Sotheby's Australia of Important Australian and International Art in Sydney on August 26.

But a painting of a warehouse and trucking park attracted intense competition and made a hammer price in the region of $¾ million, the highest price lot in the sale.

This was one of two notable paradoxes in a sale which grossed $6.2 million including premium, against estimates excluding premium of $5.5 million to $7.4 million. The sale showed powerful undercurrents of buyer activity.

Gum trees, a favourite subject in traditional art, made a surprise and stunning re-appearance at the Melbourne Art Fair which was held in its usual venue, the Royal Exhibition building, from August 12-17.

Charcoal studies of majestic specimens of the trees returned the subject to eminence in the sous-bois or thickets of an indigenous artist on the stand of William Mora writes Terry Ingram

A precious link in the Australian saleroom has been broken with the death on August 17 2014, and after a long illness, of Bruce Rutherford. What was conceivably the most prestigious sale held in Australia at the time – and possibly to this day – was held by Sotheby's in 1973 four years after Rutherford's appointment as the firm's representative for Australia.

Last night’s Melbourne auction of Important Australian Art by Bonhams certainly ranks amongst one of the smallest in terms of number of lots offered, in recent memory. Yet, the 41 lot selection of Australian paintings generated enough interest from local and interstate old guard dealers and collectors to make it an overall successful sale reminiscent of earlier years, the opulent grand ballroom of the Como house adding to the old world charm of the evening.

If a Lotus land is an idyllic place of contentment as it is sometimes defined, Lawson's must have whisked a Sydney North Shore vendor away there on August 14 when it auctioned a bronze Buddha figure on that consignors behalf, in its rooms in Leichhardt, writes Terry Ingram

Are the days of old returning to the Australian auction room? This was the indication auctioneer Martin Farrah gave on the night of the Menzies sale of 24 July in Melbourne; he clearly seemed much buoyed by the spectacular result of sister company Lawsons for the Cammack sale of fine art and antiques at the beginning of the month, and also Leonard Joel's success with the 173 works from Pro Hart's estate on 22 July. The room was packed, many were left to stand and watch proceedings, and the mood seemed one of expectation and anticipation.

Sotheby's Australia's most formidable Australian art auction specialist team appears to have missed or passed over an important link in contextualising one of the most tantalising of the lots in its sale of art and design on Melbourne on July 29, writes Terry Ingram.

The market in rare Chinese antiques just won't lie down. A new auction record for Chinese furniture is now being claimed by Lawson's for a 17th century Ming/Qing love seat or day bed sold at a house contents auction it held in Vaucluse, Sydney yesterday writes Terry Ingram

Unlike many of the previous high prices the record was not entirely unexpected. Indeed It seems to have fallen a little short.

Yet various prospective buyers enlivened the weekend viewing by examining the bed thoroughly with magnifying glasses and ultra violet light undaunted by its anonymous offering in a curious openly hybrid (an offspring of room and house contents) auction of carpets, Australian paintings and other Chinese antiques.

The Women's liberation movement beginning in the 1960s is finally having a knock-on effect in the Saleroom.

Figures compiled by the Australian Art Sales Digest (AASD) show that since 1973 gender equality has increased substantially at Australian auctions, the major pointers to the resale market in art in  Australia, writes by Terry Ingram.

Flights by still trending or new-to-the-market traditional artists helped lift results of the auction of the Bill and Eileen Cammack collection by held by Lawson's Auctions in the Menzies rooms in Sydney's Kensington on July 5 and 6.

Works by Neville Cayley (the son) soared above their modest estimates and very special paintings by John Allcot cruised away.

Also keenly bid were watercolours by a rarely seen at auction 101 year old painter of Central Australian Aborigines, Helen Baldwin, while many artists thought to have been lost to the culture bin reappeared with a surprising spread of takers.

But the big contribution to the unexpected excess value in the sale came from its 60 lots of carved Chinese ivories which were chased by members of the local Chinese community in the heavily packed room.

The growth in poster collecting in all its forms seems to have been greatly assisted by the growth of the internet.

Strongly visual images and the ability to roll up a poster and ship it to the other end of the world undoubtedly offers great advantages over the traditional large oil painting in its delicate gilt frame.

Of course, poster collectors – like all connoisseurs of works on paper – can be very picky when it comes to condition. However, this is mostly overcome with a helpful grading system for posters. So even rank amateur collectors can avoid the purchase of posters of poor quality.

Mossgreen produced some healthy figures to sustain its claim to be considered a credible force in the mixed vendor art auction market, at the auction of Important Australian and International Art in its new rooms in Melbourne's Armadale on June 24.

But this was almost entirely due to the inclusion of one painting which might normally be accommodated in its celebrated boutique and home contents sales.

The painting, Arthur Streeton's Ariadne dated 1895 sold for a total including buyers premium of $510,000, the hammer price of $410,000 being well over the $200,000 to $300,000 estimates. This was a sizable contribution to the $2.11 million total.

The trophy market is under pressure judging by two transactions which have taken place in the market for objects of desire over the past two weeks.

Saleroom habitués must begin wondering if the markets in art and the classic car, will also feel the pinch.

For it is in these upper reaches of the market, enthusiastic buying of the very rare and special, which increasingly invites the term trophyism, has been most emphatic.

Auctioneers frequently congratulate bidders from the rostrum of having won a lot they have just knocked down to them.

The objects, a stamp and a bank note still sold for a lot of money: $US9.01 million and "around $A1 million" respectively, writes Terry Ingram.

As the commemoration of the centenary of its outbreak gathers pace, the legion of World War I artists whose work is collectable is growing markedly.

So much so that some of the artists were not even around at the time of the "war to end all wars", writes Terry Ingram.

During their collecting days Alfredo Bouret Gonzalez and the late Lex Aitken cast a wide net.

As a result the sale of the of their collection - the pick of their remaining old and modern masters and decorative art - at Christie's South Kensington in London on June 4 was well received by a diverse and cosmopolitan audience.

This, the best of their "catch", was a much better received than expected grossing stg773,167 with premium on a hammer total of stg516,400, writes Terry Ingram from London.

A total of 193 lots out of 219 in the collection were sold and five withdrawn

A large number of the 101 lots at Sotheby’s on budget day bore low estimates, promising a cut to prices. The venue of choice, the aptly named Treasury Lounge at the Intercontinental Hotel in Sydney’s CBD, raised the hopes of many to bag some bargain art on the night.

International auctioneer Martin Gallon was in fine form and brimming with confidence, and in the end did not deliver any cuts at all: with 113.5% sold by value and 71.3 % sold by volume, the evening brought a total of $5,569,910 IBP. 

The Deutscher + Hackett sale strategy of letting the Easter and Anzac Holiday fall between viewings in Sydney and Melbourne appears to have paid off handsomely: On Wednesday night, the auction room was packed with dealers, consultants and collectors refreshed and ready to spend in their second major sale of the year. The results confirmed the impression: the auction house sold 76% by volume and 87% by value, generating $4,330,140 incl. buyer’s premium.

The latest round of art books, exhibitions and cocktail parties have located the new homes of two or more of Australia's most exciting colonial art finds.

The stalwart collectors, media tycoon Trevor Kennedy and Swiss-Australian financier Urs Schwarzenbach were the buyers, writes Terry Ingram.

A miniature portrait of First Surgeon General of NSW John White who came out on the First Fleet has been lent by Mr. Kennedy to the exhibition For Auld Lang Syne: Images of Scottish Australia from First Fleet to Federation being held at the Ballarat Fine Arts Gallery until July 27.

A piece of furniture which sold in a Leonard Joel decorative arts auction in  Melbourne for $3120 on May 24, 2010  is being promoted as the star piece of a Mossgreen sale of Australian Antiques and Historical Collectables on June 3 in Melbourne, with estimates of $250,000 to $300,000.

Mossgreen has yet, of course, to find a buyer for the piece.  But intensive research by the furniture history buff who bought it appears to support something of a revised re-evaluation for this rather unlikely candidate for stardom.

The lot, which could give a push to the static market in Victorian furniture and colonial collectables, is an elaborately made cradle from the 1860s which in outward appearance, is the very nemesis of current taste.

Chinese buyers paid one staggering and several top notch prices  at Sotheby's Australia auction of Fine Asian, Australian and European Arts and Design in Sydney on April 15, writes Terry Ingram.

Their bidding was still the major contributor to the $2.29 million gross which represented 134.15 per cent by value and 72 per cent by lot and compared with estimates of $1.71 million to $2.54 million.

A spectacular eruption in the prices for works by Dorrit Black was witnessed at Bonhams The Grosvenor School and Avant-garde British Printmaking sale in London on 15^th April.

Dorrit Black in fact did witness the eruption of Mount Etna in Sicily in 1928 and created this linocut print of her experience (lot 107). 

At the invitation of Christie's, a Sydney collection is being bulked up by the Mayfair decorative arts trade to create an innovative type of auction at South Kensington on June 4. The Art of Design sale is being led by two portraits from Australia by the Belle Époque painter Emile Blanche and 18^th century British artist George Romney, writes Terry Ingram.

The Romney, Mrs Moody ….Holding a dog in her lap is pictured here in an interior from the former Watsons Bay home of French fashion plate designer Alfredo Bouret Gonzalez and the late Lex Aitken who formed the Sydney collection and also were the vendors of the Bridget Riley works sold in Sydney last August.

The surprise inclusion of Christie's auction of Australian and New Zealand art sale in London last October has been acquired by the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.

But visitors to that august public institution, part of the National Library of New Zealand, may have some difficulty in finding it if they look under the artist named in Christie's catalogue.

The inclusion, a watercolour titled A Settler and her Daughter with Maoris at Wanganui, with Mount Ruapehu Behind, was catalogued as the work of John Alexander Gilfillan (1793-1864). 

In another defining moment for the antique and art market in Australia, Sydney's oldest antique centre, the Sydney Antiques Centre, is to cease trading on June 30.

The building housing the 40 year old centre is going out to selective tender and the 50 plus stall holding tenants given until that date, that is double their normal monthly notice, by the owner Anibou Pty. Ltd., to leave. 

The wool cheque still appears to command a lot of respect in the Australian art market, writes Terry Ingram.

Its power was seen twice at Melbourne auctions held just a day apart last week.

At an auction held by rare book dealer Mr Peter Arnold on March 24, an archive of material relating to one of the region's much overlooked 19^th century artists, John Cotton, sold for $177,000 IBP to a dealer from Dunkeld in the heartland of Australian wool production in Victoria's Western District.

Two pieces of Australiana sold comfortably above their estimates at very different auctions in Melbourne and Sydney this week, writes Terry Ingram .

The confident pictorial expressions of the colonies in different stages of their early development – and almost trophy lots - sold for around exactly the same hammer price which was well over $300,000 and in excess of expectations.

All nine works by the “misty modern” Clarice Beckett from the collection of fashionistas Sandra Powell and Andrew King sold at the auction of their collection by Mossgreen Auctions in its rooms in Melbourne's Armadale on March 13, writes Terry Ingram.

The best performing lot of the Becketts was $39,040 for The Red Bus (lot 1), ($32,000 hammer against estimates of $25,000 to $35,000) and with its rare dash of colour on the almost toy bus in the foreground, possibly the most endearing.

Two quite unrelated women aviatrixes occupied very different and somewhat overlooked chapters in the story of art in the Antipodes. Two new books and a coming auction have brought their contributions to the marketplace to attention.

The books are Fantasy Modern: Loudon Sainthill's Theatre of Art and Life by Andrew Montana (a senior lecturer at the Australian National University) and The Diaries of Senta Taft-Hendrey by Senta Taft-Hendrey herself.

Andre and Eva Jaku said this week in a letter to friends and clients that they would be closing the Bondi Junction publishing operations of their JQ Pty Ltd and its associated companies.

As well as giveaway quarterlies these produce the glossy half yearly magazine, World of Antiques and Art and their six a year  Collectables Trader. 

Adelaide may have to wait for its masterpiece by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). The big season for announcements - the launch of the Adelaide Biennial - has come around with no news of a painting by one of France's leading Impressionists being acquired as was the buzz.

Australian Art Sales Digest understands that the announcement of a big spend on international art is still a few months away.

Instead the latest issue of the Art Gallery of South Australia's bulletin, Articulate, discloses that the gallery has acquired a work by another “big O”. That is Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955) master of the Parisian streetscape.

The dilemma of how to value and dispose of collections has been underlined yet again with the consignment to auction of the Franklin Brooke-Hitching collection of English explorations after an intensive bid to sell the books as a library failed.

Like so many other collectors who have thrown themselves into putting their collections together, finding the ideal strategy for its disposal has not always been readily apparent.

What value attaches to the work they have put into assembling such a collection? How can they realise on this?

Alternately how much should they be discounted if selling it to one buyer given its convenience, especially if like a public library it can kept together as a memorial to the collector instead of being merged with existing holdings? 

Mr Julian Sterling's last collection faces an uphill battle after a decade of saturation at the top end of the market in Commonwealth stamps. The deceased Melbourne art and antique dealer ran out of time to complete it.

But a new generation of  mostly men in their 50s are turning to philately and rare stamps are becoming a hot collectable. This is despite the decline in traditional mail in favour of the Internet and the over- supply of new issues.

This year a legendary magenta South American stamp is expected to make millions of dollars and the world's finest collection of Tasmanian stamps also listed to go under the hammer in Switzerland.

Another auction house is to become a property developer with Youngs placing its property in Melbourne's Hawthorn East for sale with Colliers with estimate of $4 million \ to $5 million, and a search underway for a property to replace it.

The single-storey building on a 445-square-metre block at 229 Camberwell Road a few doors from Camberwell Junction and the busy Burke Road shopping strip, will most probably make way for the suburb's next medium-density apartment building.

In his book The Dealer is The Devil, Adrian Newstead  draws on his 30 years of consulting with Aboriginal artists all over Australia. Newstead has produced the definitive expose of “the first great art movement of the 21st century” which lifts the lid on what Robert Hughes once described as “the last great art movement of the 20th century.” In this extract from the book, the author details the short history of the market for Aboriginal artefacts.

Five large scale works featuring the bloated animals and figures that are the signature style of Colombian artist Fernando Botero give an internationally charged edge to the art collection of John Symond at his home Wingadal at Point Piper on Sydney Harbour. Three of the works are sculptures of humans with animals which with many works by other artists in the medium also break the boundaries for three dimensional works in Australian collections writesTerry Ingram.

Just as the Aboriginal art market appears to be hitting one of its most fragile phases, a new book by gallerist and occasional past Australian Art Sales Digest contributor Adrian Newstead provides a timely defence of some of the strategies that have been put in place to sustain it, writes Terry Ingram

His repeated defence of occasional collaboration will attract particular notice as the book   The Dealer is the Devil   arrives just after newly published claims of collaboration in the production of work by leading artist, the late Paddy Bedford.

Philips Auctions will offer a high quality, broad based, single owner collection of 52 works from across Australia including the Central Desert, tri-state border, the Kimberley and Arnhem Land, in Melbourne on 16 February 2014.

The collection has been assembled by Michael and Janet Strachan over last 20 years.

An object which sold for 64 times its estimate at Lawson's in Sydney has finally been assessed as something of far less interest than what the competing bidders had hoped for.

After 12 years involving scientific testing and expert analysis, thoughts about a domestic scale carving of a moonlike god figure from the Nukuoro people of Micronesia offered in its rooms have finally come down to earth, Terry Ingram writes.

The Art Gallery of South Australia may be about to fill one of the most glaring gaps in its collection with a multi-million dollar purchase.

A big repository of British art from as early as the late 19th century, the gallery is now believed to have a major French Impressionist painting in its line of sight.