The week commenced with a Fine Jewels, Watches & Luxury Accessories Auction on December 3 followed the next day with an 80 lot sale of Fine Art, while on Wednesday and Thursday evenings close to 600 lots of Decorative Arts followed by Asian Arts went under the hammer.
That pre-Christmas spirit of gift giving was certainly helpful in achieving results across the suite of auctions
The top priced lot in the Fine Art sale was a late period oil on canvas by Donald Binney featuring a gannet flying from right to left, this time just clipping the distant landscape of the Queen Charlotte Sound at the top of the South Island (Te Wai Pounamu).
With the other two Auckland auction houses also featuring Don Binney paintings as premier lots in their pre-Christmas round of sales it was clear the interest in this work, Manunui Queen Charlotte (Lot 239 ) would be considerable and it was, with bidding starting at $150,000. It rose quickly in $5,000 increments to finally sell to an art consultant on the phone but in the room for $200,000 just over the high estimate of $190,000.
Clearly this work was the highlight of the Fine Art sale by a good country mile, accounting for 60% of the sale's hammer total of $325,000 and of the other 78 lots, 43 were passed in. A number were sold after only receiving a single book bid or with very little bidding activity from the room
There were exceptions. An early abstract work by Geoff Thornley, Painting No.17 (Lot 277 ) near the end of the sale is a good example selling for $8,500
An undated but clearly recent work of Billy Apple entitled Basic Needs (Lot 256 ) sold to a bidder in the room for $17,000 the second highest price on the night
While a small selection of international works attracted mixed results, the most interesting was a ''rare'' print by Freidrich Hundertwasser entitled 1001 Nights (Lot 216 ).
With a presale estimate of $2,000 - $3,000 this heavily embossed uneditioned silkscreen print sold for $4,400
Two works by well-known Chinese artists Yue Minjun (Lot 224 ) and Feng Zhengjie (Lot 225 ) failed to attract bids, but a large brightly coloured offset lithograph by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami (Lot 226 ) sold for $5,000 to a bidder in the room.
The four sales yielded just of $1 million. The new year will see the new Webb's open an on-site cafe and there are other developments planned that have not yet been announced. All we can say at this stage, is watch this space.
All prices shown are in $NZ and are hammer unless otherwise stated.
