Ian Fairweather’s Street in Soochow 1948 (Lot 8 ) belied its humble 21 x 21 cm size and its pencil and gouache medium to bring a sense of auction delight and double its pre-sale estimate at Deutscher and Hackett’s ‘Important Australian + International Fine Art’ final sale of the year in Sydney, 22 November 2023, selling for $70,000 after spirited bidding.
It was one of what auctioneer Roger McIlroy described as a ‘tranche’ of Fairweather works of the 1930s and 1940s being offered from the Skinner Collection in Perth. (Joe and Rose Skinner were major Perth gallerists from the late 1950s to the 1970s.) These modest cardboard and paper works were acquired by Joe Skinner in one shot from the stockroom of the Redfern Gallery in London in 1953, more than a decade after they were first shown. What impressed and delighted at the Melbourne viewing was the refreshingly loose brushwork, instilled with the artist’s Chinese calligraphic memories that aerated the picture surface. Specifically, the brushwork avoided the oppressive overworking that seems to sometimes crush Fairweather’s restless spirit in his more highly valued images.
This tranche was far from oppressive. Reaching their $80,000 estimates were: Cornsifting, Soochow 1945-7 (Lot 5 ); Canal Foochow 1945-7 (Lot 6 ) and Landscape with Horses c1936 (Lot 7 ). Here, Fairweather’s dripping brush darts around the descriptive landscape forms as if they were painted Chinese characters from his Shanghai letters. At the viewing, this grouping was like a mini solo show of eight pieces in all. They sat quite fresh as if they had just been made, but felt more deeply meaningful than the current designer fashion for bright, brushy, lightweight paintings.
Further on in the auction was another mini solo show of six hauntingly beautiful works by Yvonne Audette, painted in her studios in New York, Milan and Melbourne. Audette was an artist who was suddenly ‘discovered’ by the Australian art establishment in the early 1990s, long after her return to Australia. As a young artist she found herself in New York at the exact moment that American Abstract Expressionism was being born and she absorbed its bloodline. This is immediately evident in the palette knife work Overpass No 1 1954-5 (Lot 28 ) which sold for estimate at $40,000. This seminal work may well prove to be the bargain of the night. Next to this at the viewing were enticing examples of her lyrical output from later decades and they all sold strongly. The Spirit Laughs 1964-5 (Lot 30 ), Different Directions 1964 (Lot 31 ) and The Music Score 1967 (Lot 32 ) were paintings that demonstrated her now-famous musical line-making set on a lighter ground. There was competition for these works from the telephones and the internet, all finally selling mid-range for $90,000, $120,000 and $110,000 respectively, with the latter actually clinched by an internet bidder.
Deutscher and Hackett are to be congratulated for these curious solo shows set amid more trophied works in the catalogue. And there were trophies. It is very difficult to bypass the liquorice colourings of John Brack’s Wig Shop Window 1970 (Lot 14 ). It sold with a single telephone bid of $650,000 beating what appeared to be a book bid set at the low estimate of $600,000. Brack very cleverly curved the straight lines of the shelving in this painting to achieve the effect of reflected ‘window shopping’ and the psychological tension between the pulls of desire and the handbrake of practical affordability. We all experience this when buying paintings—sorry, wigs.
The auction began with a Margaret Preston mainstay Phlox 1925 (Lot 1 ) which brought spirited bidding from the room and the phones to reach $220,000, well above the low estimate of $180,000. That estimate is seemingly conservative, given that five similar-scale works have had recent realised prices exceeding this figure. Next, a characteristic deco Dorrit Black editioned woodcut, Music 1927-8 (Lot 2 ), reached its top estimate of $75,000, equalling the artist record for another edition of the same image set by Bonhams back in 2018. Clearly the market still maintains its interest in Australia’s modernist female artists, and indeed, notable female artists in general.
Nowhere was this interest more evident than in the spirited battle between a persistent room bidder and a phone bidder for the large Cressida Campbell unique colour woodblock print Interior with Red Ginger 1998 (Lot 17 ). This writer recorded 25 bids in this battle, but there may have been more. The hammer finally fell on the side of the room bidder at $270,000, well above top estimate, but still modest, given that the three realisations above this figure have been in the last year. People are fascinated by Campbell’s sophisticated printing process resulting in an accumulation of printed dots sitting proud on the surface of the paper. The woodblocks themselves are also collected, with the small example, Vase 1999 (Lot 50 ) selling for $18,000 on $15,000 - $20,000 estimates.
Cutting a more savagely realist document of the 1970s, Carol Jerrems’ superb black-and-white contemporary photograph Vale Street 1975 (Lot 43 ) set a new record for the artist, falling to a room bidder for $140,000 on $80,000 - $120,000 estimates. Also on the contemporary front, it was pleasing to see exceptional interest in Patricia Piccinini’s sculptural wall piece Glade 2005 (Lot 41 ), doubling its top estimate to sell for $55,000. This was the artist’s auction record for a sculptural work, beaten only by the groundbreaking Psychogeography photographic image back in 2003, when digital was a new medium for artists. However, not all was roses in the contemporary secondary market. The super-popular primary market artist Dale Frank’s elongatedly-titled I was sent off to find an 18th century diamond brooch, dressed in a donkey jacket…atmosphere 2005 (Lot 42 ) failed to attract a bid and was passed in.
Finally, mention must be made of the John Glover Study of Oak Trees c1840 (Lot 24 ) with a figure crouched in a remembered European glade. Handsome and Italianate in its original Australian hand-carved frame, the work exceeded expectations to sell for $140,000 over modest $80,000 - $100,000 estimates. Auctioneer Roger McIlroy quipped ‘if only he had painted a kangaroo instead of that figure’. So sits the Australian Market.
All prices quoted are hammer prices and do not include the buyer’s premium. On the night the sale achieved 84% by number of lots sold. Final sale results will be added when they become available.
