Art Auction Sale Reviews

The news that came at the close of 2019 might have come as no surprise to industry insiders, but the announcement that Sotheby’s Australia will no longer exist as a trading name from 31 December is a turning point for the Australian market. With the demise of Sotheby’s Australia, so ends fifty years of history.

The evolution of Sotheby’s Australia to Smith & Singer is largely symbolic. For ten years, Sotheby’s has been operating here under a licence. Sotheby’s International and its counterpart, Christie’s, departed our shores many years ago for the more fertile commercial grounds of Asia. For the auction behemoths, the Australian art auction market was insignificant; a single painting sold at one of their major London or New York sales can equate to the entire turnover for the Australian auction market.

From 2020, Australia’s most successful auction house, Sotheby’s Australia, will trade under the of banner Smith & Singer. Sotheby’s opened for business in Australia in 1973 and their Australian auction business was acquired under licence by Geoffrey Smith and Gary Singer in 2009. After a highly successful ten-year term and the recent purchase of Sotheby’s international by French media titan Patrick Drahi for $2.7 billion dollars taking the company into private hands, the Australian licence is not being renewed.

Modestly titled, modestly attended and conducted with a confident yet casual air, Sotheby’s inaugural NY Aboriginal Art sale blew a raft of records out of the water[i]. With many exceptional works among its compact 33 lots, the sale captured the attention of international collectors on both sides of the Atlantic and grossed over AUD$4 million incl. BP (US$2,795,750).

Surpassed only by superb results for Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Gordon Bennett, Ronnie Tjampitjinpa’s cover lot, Tingari Ceremonies at the Site of Pintjin (Lot 13), drew the busiest contest, more than doubling the artist’s previous top price, selling on the phone for US$195K (AUD$352,729 incl. BP). It is now destined for repatriation, and is the only work among the top lots heading our way.

Hugh Ramsay (1877-1906), whose critical fortunes, based on his remarkable talent attracted comments suggesting he would have been accepted as a genius but for his far too early death at 28, and has also had his reputation sustained by generous gifts of his works to public institutions by the Ramsay family which established Kiwi as an international brand of boot and shoe polish when World War I broke out. This was only 15 years after the artist had wowed curators of the Paris Salons.

Coo-ee Art MarketPlace’s November 2017 auction[i] raised eyebrows: the specialised sector was still flailing in recovery from a GFC downturn greater than hit the broader Australian art market. Four sales since, they’ve created opportunity for vendors in a field strangled by restrictive consignment policies from the big houses and blighted with overly conservative-aimed-to-clear estimates at the other end of the spectrum. With a healthy clearance of 73% by lot, and 85% by value, their latest Indigenous Fine Art Auction signals ‘niche filled.’

Deutscher & Hackett’s final auction for the 2019 season produced sound results and reinforced the desire for quality works of art by discerning collectors.

It's no surprise that the appeal for traditional art continues to gather momentum after somewhat floundering over the last ten years, probably due to the establishment of resale royalty, copyright, generational change and auction house concentration of the modern sector of the marketplace.

Australian and Chinese art merge into the latest sale at Bonhams with interesting results and perhaps a sign of things to come. When combined, the sale led to an overall offering of 135 lots with estimates of $1.39 million to $ 2 million.

In total 91 lots sold for $1.226 million hammer price or $1.496 million including buyer’s premium, which equates to 67% by numbers and 88% by value. However, of the 74 Australian art lots on offer, just 38 or about 50% by numbers sold.

Women artists have now broken ground that was once exceptionally hard to conquer in Australia. Following a recent wave of new interest around the world in gender equality in art appreciation, they have now broken ground in one of the world’s most formidable places for progressive art in the world. That is in territory once trodden by the White Shoe Brigade (WSB), not noted to be a tasteful lot as their footwear suggested.

The breakthrough has been achieved by a museum not an art gallery as might usually be expected in matters of fine art and might be considered by some to be on a higher plain. The Museum of Brisbane (MoB) which has brought out many of the little-known collection of Brisbane artists it has in its collection, and borrowed others for the exhibition called New Women showing for more than half the coming summer.

With a superbly curated catalogue in hand, Melbourne’s art elite came in large numbers to pay homage to the late Rae Rothfield in Sotheby’s Australia's prestigious Collins Street, Melbourne showrooms. The room felt more Manhattan than Melbourne as Sotheby’s Chairman Geoffrey Smith eloquently addressed the crowded room before the auction, stating ‘This is a celebration of the life of Rae Rothfield’.

A highly respected collector, much admired patron of the arts during her life and with her deep understanding and passion for sculpture, Rae Rothfield gathered an outstanding collection of masterworks by International and Australian artists.

Works by Australian artist the late David Boyd (1924-2011) featured prominently in Gibson’s Auctions October 14 Melbourne-based Australian and International Art sale with five of his paintings occupying the top six auction spots.

Transported to the well-heeled world of London’s New Bond Street, Auguste Rodin’s bronzes from the Sir Warwick and Lady Fairfax collection outshone their Sydney origins at David Jones department store when they were offered at Bonhams Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale in London on 10th October.

The centrepiece of the Fairfax group was a standing bronze of one of the citizens of Calais who sacrificed their lives to save their city under siege from Edward III’s British forces in 1346.  Rodin’s human-scale figure, L’un des Bourgeois de Calais: Étude de nu monumentale pour Pierre de Wissant, (lot 26) has an out-stretched hand to shield a face in agony in a moment of sacrifice. It is testimony to the physical human drama that Rodin infuses in his subjects. Standing on an elevated plinth, so as to evince the same bearing that it projected at the entrance to the Fairfax home in Sydney, the work achieved a hammer price of £660,000 which translates to more than $1,2000,000 AUD including buyer’s premium.

Seventeen paintings by Australian artist and 1933 Archibald Prize winner Charles Wheeler (1880-1977) from his own estate will be auctioned from 6.30pm Monday October 14 as part of Gibson’s Auctions Australian and International Art sale at 885-889 High Street, Armadale.

The paintings include a self-portrait (lot 3) painted during his student days and the Untitled (Mooring on the River Thames) (lot 16).

Among his other works for auction are two works featuring Dora Green – one entitled Portrait of Dorrie (Dora Green) (lot 6) and the other Dorrie, circa 1938 (lot 11).

The Gippsland Art Gallery at Sale in Victoria is acquiring the collection of 17 works by Jan Hendrik Scheltema (1861-1941) that formed the Scheltema family collection of the artist’s work in the Netherlands.

The works are being donated to the gallery by the beneficiary of the will of the last direct descendant of the artist bearing the Scheltema name. The bloodline has come to an end – hence the availability of the works.

A local art afficionado with a Dutch background, Peter Reynders, who wrote the very thorough article on Scheltema in Wikepedia helped facilitate the gift through contacts he established with people in the Netherlands as a result of his extensive research on the subject.

Grosvenor School prints continue to be popular in the auction room, after a good number of offerings from the Plomley collection sold at Deutscher +  Hackett in August. The rare Resting Models, 1934 (lot 5) of two female nudes by Ethel Spowers was estimated very conservatively at $5,000-8,000, and perhaps unsurprisingly, was the first lot in the Menzies auction to really fire. The last time another example of this print appeared at auction in Australia was 23 years ago, when Christies sold number 10/50 for $5,500 in 1996. This example, 1/50, sold for more than three times its high estimates for $27,000 hammer.

We all love a good home contents auction, but “Fairwater” in Point Piper is not just any old home, but the ultimate Sydney harbour front mansion on 11,000 m2 of manicured grounds.

The largest privately-held property on Sydney harbour was owned by the Fairfax publishing dynasty for over 100 years. Last year, it was sold for $100 million, the highest price ever for an Australian residential property, to new money, tech entrepreneur Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Bonhams was entrusted with selling 376 family heirlooms from the collection of Sir Warwick and Lady Fairfax, once housed in “Fairwater” and other Fairfax residences, “Barford” in Bellevue Hill, “Serene House” in Bondi and the legendary penthouse atop the Pierre Hotel in New York, Lady Fairfax’ abode from 1993 to 1999. Not surprisingly, the saleroom in Queen Street Woollahra attracted well over 150 attendees on Sunday afternoon for what turned out to be a 7-hour auction marathon, with two auctioneers sharing the load, Bonhams Australia director Merryn Schriever and Edward Wilkinson, executive director of Bonhams Hong Kong and flown in specially for the occasion.

As Menzies chief executive officer Justin Turner confidently predicts a continuing upward trend in Australia’s secondary art market – based on strong performances over the past 12 months – the auction house prepares itself for a Sydney sale on September 26 hoping to achieve more than $8 million in revenue if all goes well.

“The real estate market also appears to be turning and there are a lot more apartments for sale than there are good paintings (of which supply is finite),” he said.

Although there are no million dollar paintings in this auction – to be held from 6.30pm Thursday September 26 at Menzies Gallery 12 Todman Avenue, Kensington – there are several excellent examples of various leading Australian artists works.

The exhibition “Sydney Moderns – Art for a New World” at the Art Gallery in NSW in 2012 was a ground breaking, timely and beautiful display of Australia’s greatest modernist artists, featuring the best, in particular of so many female painters including Margaret Preston and Grosvenor School prints makers Ethel Spowers, Dorrit Black and Evelyn Syme, to name just a few. Two male painters prominently featured in “Sydney Moderns” were Roy de Maistre and Roland Wakelin.

Way ahead of the curve as private collectors of these greats of Australian modernism were Melbourne couple Ken and Joan Plomley. This was demonstrated in the offering of their carefully honed collection of 36 paintings and prints starting off the  Deutscher + Hackett fine art sale at the National Art School of 130 works on 28 August 2019.

Not surprisingly, it was the photographs of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquering  Mount Everest that sent collectors into a frenzy when the lifetime works of English climber, explorer and photographer Alfred Gregory (1913-2010) went under the hammer at Gibson’s Auctions Melbourne sale on August 26.

The year was 1953 and the pair were creating history – for the climb had never before been successfully completed.

Resurrected for their mid-year round, Dobell’s Dead Landlord (Lot 16) helped secure the year’s best result of $12 million dollars (incl. BP) for the Sotheby’s 27 August Important Australian Art sale, held at Sydney’s Intercontinental Hotel. Not brave enough to laud it on the cover (it had a dedicated glossy lift-out brochure instead), Sotheby’s nonetheless scored a record-breaking result for the curiously macabre and modestly sized painting, which sold nonchalantly to a slightly rumpled private collector in a comfy jumper for $1 million dollars (est. $900-1,100,000).

English-born climber, explorer and photographer Alfred Gregory (1913-2010) undoubtedly received his first big break when in 1953 he was chosen as a climbing member of the British team, led by John Hunt, to scale Mount Everest.

The team reached 8500 metres in support of Sir Edmund Hillary-Norgay Tenzig’s historic first successful summit attempt.

Gregory was official stills photographer for the expedition – leading to several more mountain climbs during the 1950s, including Rolwaling and Gauri Shankar massif in Nepal where 19 new peaks were conquered and a plane table survey conducted, and to Ana Dablam.

One of Australia’s largest private collections of Roy de Maistre paintings will be offered for auction from 7pm Wednesday August 28 by Deutscher and Hackett at Sydney’s Cell Block Theatre, National Art School in Forbes Street, Darlinghurst.

Part of Glen Iris couple the late Ken and Joan Plomley collection of modernist art and comprising the first 36 lots in the auction, the paintings were assembled largely because of the former’s close connection with the de Mestre family through his great-uncle Etienne de Mestre, Roy’s father.

Numerous hammer prices at multiples of the estimates, auction records for six female artists, and a number of sleepers made for a very exciting auction for both sellers and buyers at Davidson Auctions’ Fine Art sale on Sunday, 21 July 2019. Robert Davidson, principal of the highly respected and well regarded Sydney boutique auction house, was delighted with the level of interest and results achieved: “I had lots of new of new buyers, in the room, on the phone and online”, he said.

As reported previously on AASD, David Angeloro’s collection of Australian Women Artists created a buzz, and the results are testament to this, with a number of new auction records set for many female artists who were not as well known as they might be. With auction results like these, then clearly more focus is warranted on a great many forgotten women artists of the late 19th and early 20th century.

It is hard not to be inspired by one man’s art collection passion, especially when it comes from the ebullient David James Angeloro, who was born and raised in Syracuse, New York, but has called Australia home since 1971. Angeloro’s enthusiasm for Australian women artists and in particular many who have been forgotten is unabated. After nearly 50 years pursuing his deeply held views about the museum quality of these paintings, his collection of close to 100 works (almost a quarter of the total of 475 lots) is to be sold at a Davidson Auctions fine art sale this Sunday 21 July from 12 noon, in Annandale, Sydney. https://www.davidsonauctions.com.au/

Howard Arkley is a contemporary artist whose work has joined that elusive million-dollar club. A new record was set at Menzies winter sale on June 27 in Melbourne, as Deluxe Setting, 1992 (below) achieved just over $1,500,000, eclipsing his previous record of $646,000 set in 2016 for a work of the same medium and stature. Record auction prices were also achieved for works by Bronwyn Oliver, Rick Amor and Inge King.

Winter is coming. In preparation, Bonhams noted that five works from Nolan’s Antarctica series were purchased by the National Gallery of Australia Foundation in 2017: this included two images of explorer’s heads and three dark landscapes. Bonham’s sale offered more to a waiting public, coming fresh and directly released from the estate of Lady Nolan.

These works were executed by Nolan after an eight-day Antarctic visit with his friend Alan Moorehead. During an intense period of concentration, he re-visited the medium of oil on white-primed board. He favoured plastered matt blacks and silver-greys in his palette, allowing barely a flicker of white from the underpainting to shine through (bringing to vivid life the age-old technique of water colour). Such an irony, as on my last visit to the southern continent, it was blindingly white on white everywhere. But Nolan loaded his canvas with matt black. The sort of darkness that clouds the eyes of the helmeted explorers like Scott and Shackleton when they can no longer see the horizon. 

A New Zealand artist is at the top of the list of women artists who will dominate the “What’s on” lists of important exhibition venues around the world this year.

Much-loved by Australian art collectors in particular in her day, the artist is Frances Hodgkins (1869 -1947) who showed at Anthony Hordern’ Fine Arts Gallery in Sydney in 1913. She is currently the star of one of the biggest exhibitions - numbering close to 300 watercolours - showing at the Auckland Art Gallery.

The exhibition is aptly titled Frances Hodgkins – European Journeys because she was very peripatetic. She is also the subject of a commercial exhibition Francis Hodgkins - A New Zealand Modernist at Auckland’s Jonathan Grant Gallery (JGG) of 15 watercolours eight of which have been sold. It runs until September 1.

In a first for Art Basel which concludes today (Sunday) paying for a stand at the world’s most prestigious art fair, has become somewhat easier (if you are accepted into the fair by the vetting committee in the first place – 290 this year from 34 different countries). Art Basel director Marc Spiegler announced in his press conference on the opening VIP day that square metre prices for smaller galleries are less than those paid by mega-galleries like Gagosian, Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, Acquavella, Helly Nahmand and others.

Over the years, the chairman of top 500 Australian company Menzies International and co-founder of Menzies Art Brands has purchased impressive works by many of Australia’s leading artists including such household names as Brett Whiteley, John Bracks and Russell Drysadale. The keen collector is now divesting himself of nine significant sculptures – which currently reside at his holiday residence Noorilim near Nagambe in northern Victoria – so he can put the funds towards his next project, acquiring paintings of international significance.

Having rebirthed its defunct Australian ‘outpost’[i] auctions in the mother country in 2015 to great success, Sotheby’s is now moving Aboriginal art sales to their New York headquarters. This announcement rides on a wave of recent high-profile visibility, critical success and reception to exhibitions of Aboriginal art in the city, the latest of which is actor/comedian/writer Steve Martin’s Aboriginal art collection, which is being showcased in Manhattan at Gagosian Gallery until 3 July.

The recent passing of Peter Webb, age 85, brought to a close to the era of one of the early movers and shakers on the gallery, contemporary art and auction house scenes in Auckland from the mid 1950s and for many decades onwards.

Lauraine Diggins OAM, Founder and Director of Lauraine Diggins Fine Art died on 19th of April 2019.

Lauraine’s professional involvement in Australian art commenced in 1974, with her acquisition, almost on a whim, of Bartoni Gallery in South Yarra. It was obviously the right calling as she flourished and developed into the highly respected dealer of today. The early 1980s saw Lauraine compiling expansive exhibitions of Australian art showing from her home in North Caulfield before establishing a purpose-built gallery for Lauraine Diggins Fine Art in 1988 designed with architect Graeme Gunn, providing an environment of discretion, contemplation and warmth, opening with the exhibition The Antipodeans: Another Chapter.

A rare pair of Chinese bronze and enamel vases (lot 347), decorated with birds (including peacocks), lotus and flowering peony and iris, was the top selling lot at Leski Auctions May 5 Melbourne sale of the iconic Joshua McClelland Print Room and family associated Rathdowne Galleries (which closed in 2018) comprehensive range of prints, paintings, porcelain and furniture – going under the hammer for $19,000 on a $10,000 high estimate. 

Gibson’s Auctions Red Hill sale on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula on April 28 saw many items sell well above their catalogue estimates.

Perhaps the most remarkable was an untitled watercolour painting, 28 x 44 cm, circa 1835 from “Australian School”, estimated at $300-500, showing a view of Hobart with St David’s on the left (lot 155), that sold for $5612 including buyer’s premium – more than 11 times the high estimate.

The 2018 closing of the Joshua McClelland Print Room and the family-associated Rathdowne Galleries in Carlton signalled the end of an important era in Melbourne’s and Australia’s art market.

Leski Auctions has been asked to auction the paintings, prints, porcelain and furniture from 12pm Sunday May 5 at 727-729 High Street, Armadale – bringing to a close a Melbourne icon that was established in 1927 by Joshua McClelland when he set up an antiques business in his own name.

McClelland died in 1956 and his wife Joan continued the business which by then had changed name to its present day nomenclature.

Rarely has the Cell Block Theatre at the National Art School seen so many art industry personalities, insiders and habitués as at the Deutscher + Hackett’s fine art auction on 10 April 2019. Many would have been there to observe how Charles Blackman’s Alice on the Table (lot 9) fared, after the artist’s Sleeping Alice offered just the previous night at Sotheby’s did not awaken. With hopes of $1.5 to $2 million, Alice on the Table sold for $1.35 million hammer price or $1.647 million including buyer’s premium - not exactly flying, but respectably standing up for herself. In the event, auction records were set for Bronwyn Oliver’s Unity (lot 2) with $330,000 hp and Ian Fairweather’s Barbecue (lot 23) selling for $1.4 million hp. The sale achieved a total of $9.0 million IBP, and 100% sold by value and 87% sold by volume. 

William Dobell’s Woman in a Restaurant, 1934 (Lot 8) does it again. After smashing records at the ground-breaking 1962 Norman Schureck sale[i], the small painting, fresh from long term loan to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, sold last night at Sotheby’s Important Australian and International Art auction in front of a hushed audience of about 70 people and a film crew at Sydney’s Intercontinental Hotel for the new record of $770,000, against a size-matched diminutive estimate of $80-120,000.

Described in the catalogue entry as a ‘jewel-like composition’, the study of a rather ungainly figure shrouded and accessorised in the obvious trappings of wealth, and captured in an unflattering moment lighting a cigarette in a dark restaurant setting, is certainly a jewel in the crown of the artist’s small genre pictures from the 1930s, most of which reside in the collections of public institutions, where, most likely, this work will have found a new home.

A memorial gathering will be held at the National Art School in Sydney on Thursday April 11 for a man who was largely responsible for spending the fortune that is beginning to transform appreciation of Australia’s material culture.

That man was Martyn Cook who helped Adelaide property investor David Roche realise his dream to establish a museum devoted to the decorative arts of Continental Europe and Russia in a custom built Adelaide museum.

The David Roche Foundation which supports the museum has already spent the six years of its establishment under the directorship of Mr Cook, mounting talks, viewings and exhibitions and making new acquisitions which for Mr Roche, who died in 2013, provided for, so that it continued to develop and grow.

Australia lost a treasury of knowledge and appreciation of antiques in Australia with the death of Mr Cook which took place at the untimely age of 60 in his sleep in Sydney in the early hours of April 2.

The fine art auction season 2019 started well on 28 March: Menzies sold $7.35 million including buyer’s premium, with clearance rates of 93% by value and 77% by lot.

Starting with two collections, it was evident that everyone loves Arthur Streeton: there were three paintings to fall in love with in last night’s sale of Australian and International Fine Art and Sculpture at Menzies’ Kensington gallery. All were formerly in the collection of Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer.

The prolific offering of quality works by leading Australian artists at Deutscher and Hackett’s forthcoming art auction on Wednesday April 10 at Sydney’s National Art School in Forbes Street, Darlinghurst, includes four works with a low estimate of $500,000 or more, and a total estimate range for the sale of $7.38 million to $10.45 million.

They include Charles Blackman’s Alice on the Table, 1956, (lot 9) a tempera and oil on composition board that has a catalogue estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million.

Originally displayed at Brisbane’s Johnstone Gallery, the painting was auctioned in August 1995 by Christie’s in Melbourne and has been sitting in a British private collection ever since.

Rare and substantial works by an accomplished Australian colonial artist, providing new perspectives on important aspects of mid-19th century Australian art and life, will be auctioned from 6.30pm Thursday March 28 by Menzies at its Sydney gallery at 12 Todman Avenue, Kensington. Thomas Tyrwhitt Balcombe (1810-1861) was a well-known colonial identity, field surveyor and professional artist who won many awards and medals for his efforts – and whose works until recently were few and far between.

The man who last century set one Australian art auction record after another and probably dispatched to new owners more substantial Australian paintings than any other auctioneer Down Under, died in Melbourne at the age of 90 on January 19.

From 1951, Graham Joel, was the head of the auction house of Leonard Joel founded in 1919 by his father whose name it bore, and helped the market grow exponentially after an anxiety producing lull in the late 1970s.

Barely had the embers of the last fireworks from the New Year celebrations ceased to smoulder than a sleeper of apparently considerable Antipodean interest popped up in the international salerooms.

Continuing 2018’s run of “Australasian” sleepers across the world, a portrait miniature catalogued as one of Captain James Cook’s seamen was sold at an auction at Liskeard in Cornwall for a little expected £5150 hammer price.