Mr Geoffrey Smith, Vice Chairman and National Head of Art, Sotheby's Australia, has learnt a lot in 12 months.
This includes how to arrange flowers..
Clearly, that is not chronologically.
Seven very presentable still lifes have been consigned for the company's sale of Important Australian Art in Sydney on November 23.
Judiciously placed as they are in the catalogue, they have proved very valuable in helping soften the impact of the 25 individually lotted Robert Klippel sculptures.
These are the artist's familiar miniature lightning rods or antenae, that otherwise, despite their modest sizes, might overwhelm the sale.
The offering invokes memories of the sale of the Bill Burge collection, with even more and bigger Klippels, held just up the road from Sotheby's rooms by Christie's at the old Edgecliff Post Office building in March 2006 before the GFC.
Danny Kneebone, the same designer of the Burge catalogue, which Smith says is one of the most elegant ever published, is responsible for the Sotheby's catalogue. Kneebone is now Sotheby's full time graphics designer.
The Sotheby's catalogue is a handsome volume, but that does not mean, of course, that lightning will strike twice, and the same electricity that was generated for the Burge lots will flash again.
The Sotheby's Klippels, however, are only from “a distinguished private collection Sydney” which is anonymous but assumed to relate to the family and his studio.
The Burge offering was put together by a selective collector widely admired for his connoisseurship.
The Burge sales also filled some of the available space that could have been available for the current offering, even if, measuring 23 by 25 by 5cm (e. g. lot 29) they may not individually require a lot of room.
For purchasers, they will, however, leave a big hole in the bank account, at estimates of $25,000 to $35,000 despite some allowance in drawing these up for the tougher times.
Some dealers are believed to have also been approached to handle the works prior to their latest consignment, but not coming up with the goods.
Smith's deep involvement with Klippel's work and commitment to it through the retrospective curated for the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) may, on the other, hand make them an easy sell on his part..
The 94 lot sale with combined estimates of $3.87 million to $5.29 million is also not a big ask on today's market.
The catalogue obviously owes much elsewhere to Smith's previous career, as NGV curator.
He knows where a lot of the pictures are and has made his name handling certain artists such as Tucker and Nolan, the latter relatively well and freshly represented in the sale.
Following trade pressure, he ceased organising catalogues chronologically as a curator might, in the August sale and with that, he, the auctioneer, (presumably the Sotheby's Australia chairman Tim Goodman) should be able to maintain interest until the end of the sale.
It has meant bringing a few tricky more contemporary works up front, but as rival Deutscher + Hackett has proved, this can be refreshingly productive if estimates can be brought down.
Smith wisely kicks off with an Arthur Boyd Shoalhaven. Very commercial. Affordable Nolan Kellys and Olsen frogs follow.
With affordable Nolans from Lord McAlpine's collection and a Lucien Freud etching also towards the end of the sale the midway departure of even the rubbernecks should be avoided.
Possibly by accident, the catalogue also jumps around geographically, giving Mr Goodman, the major shareholder of the auction house, just the "national" sale that he strove for before he aquired the Sotheby's Australia franchise.
After Victorians have a go at John Perceval's Tangled Boats on Mordialloc Creek, (lot 50 ($40,000 to $50,000) comes John Olsen's The Coorong ($70,000 to $90,000) (Lot 9 ) for South Australians and then Ray Crooke's Islander scene (Lot 10 ) ($50,000 to $70,000) for Queenslanders..
Buyers do not always buy geographically, of course, but West Australians will be particularly interested in Elioth Gruner's Hills of Northam (Lot 17 ) (estimate $20,000 to $30,000) which has a fascinating commission history.
The three quality works are spaced out, from lot 11, which is Sidney Nolan's Escaped Convict, to lot 20 Rupert Bunny's, The Cliff Path and lot 44 the Donald Friend door titled Adam and Eve.
These are all fresh to the market and except for the Bunny, which was re-introduced to the art world in the Bunny retrospective two years ago, also to the contemporary eye, the Bunny previously being seen over 100 years ago.
The estimate on the Bunny, is $400,000 to $500,000 although buyers might have expected a work bigger than its 65 by 81 cm, after seeing it in the catalogue and given the number of figures in it.
The Nolan (estimate $400,000 to $600,000) is particularly striking, depicting the convict, in incongruous garb, in a landscape setting 'like an opal in the rough."
The words are those of another former public gallery curator Dr David Hansen, who has written most of the catalogue essays.
Hansen is the unexposed treasure of the Sotheby's operation, melding words into texts that must make readers feel like they are in an Italian ice cream shop trying to decide which flavours to select, and providing clinching arguments for an immediate sale.
Read particularly his essays on the Grace Cossington Smiths.
Hansen even sometimes out-classes Bruce James as when he refers to "dynamic , organic art nouveau interlace of stems and sprigs" and "subtly-coloured blooms in a palette of cream and pink.'
On the Friend door he waxes:"As colourful as it is clever, as improvisatory as it is impressive, the present work is one of Friend's decorative masterpieces," not that Friend had many masterpieces of any other kind.
The two Charles Blackmans up front are of the same unfinished or unresolved standard that one might associate with some of the pictures that crept into the national auctions conducted by Goodmans, Sotheby's Australia's forerunner.
William Robinson's Rainforest with Botan Creek (Lot 34 ) at $200,000 to $250,000 lacks a bit of blue sky, but perhaps you do not always see that in a rainforest.
Two very interesting works represent Australia's most important Impressionist artist, Sir Arthur Streeton.
They are Blue and Gold, an oil painted in 1903 (Lot 19 ) estimates $80,000 to $100,000 and The Artist's Dining Room painted in 1919 (Lot 61 ).
The first is interesting from a taste viewpoint, as it would have been keenly sought after in the last art boom in the 1980s when its very title would have given collectors orgasms.This is not that it is an erotic picture, as it consists mainly of trees against a blue sky with lots of small figures in long dresses in it.
The second is a subject rare in Australian art, a full scale dimly lit interior. It reveals a Streeton securely steeped in the traditions of the New English Art Club.
On the question of electricity Mr Goodman might well reconsider the dim lighting of his sales following the last sale's fracas.
He himself could not see the bid,s let alone us observers and value checkers on some of the lots.
The lighting was so low that a few people asked jokingly if he had not paid the electricity bill.
In times when even the security of big banks is queried there is a danger some could take the question seriously.
