To be fair, IAC did have a head start on the consignments with the Paul and Kerry Barber Collection which comprised the first 58 lots of their 119 lot sale on the 23rd October. This Wellington collection had a number of choice examples of early modernism, really lovely domestic scale sculpture which is always an easy sell if the price is right and some good examples of work by Brent Wong and Toss Woollaston.
This collection provided a great platform on which to base a sale, rounded out with a Goldie portrait, a major Don Binney Te Henga landscape complete with soaring bird and a very significant painting by Michael Smither.
The Barber collection started solidly with bronze sculptures by Terry Stringer, Greer Twiss and Paul Dibble selling well. A unique bronze sculpture by Greer Twiss titled The Runner, 1964 (Lot 7 ) was bid well above low estimate to realise $5,250. An early work by Brent Wong, Coastal Hills, Dunes and Clouds 1974 (Lot 15 ) once belonging to prominent collector Ron Sang, achieved the low estimate of $25,000 which was a great buy. Although this estimate and selling price was in line with recent sales, this was a particularly good example and surely had the potential to make more on the night.
Late Modernist Charles Tole can currently do no wrong in the auction room and his painting The Blue Fence (Lot 20 ) was strongly contested by three parties to realise $24,000 against a $20,000 reserve. Tole’s most successful works have strong colour contrasts and hard geometric lines and The Blue Fence with its pop of yellow right in the centre and diagonal lines converging to a central circle gives the work an extremely satisfying composition.
Still within the Barber Collection, Don Binney’s Remuera Jug V 1993 (Lot 23 ) was one of the surprises of the night. With Binney’s bird paintings currently sitting as the superstars of the auction rooms, the time is right for some of his other themes to start to increase in value and IAC is the perfect position to capitalize on this, with the location of the work, Remuera (an affluent suburb in Auckland), situated right next to Parnell where IAC is located. A large number of buyers (surely from Remuera!) liked this local image, enough for the work to sell for $20,500 against a $12,000 low estimate.
Personally, the highlight of the Barber collection was the wonderful painting by New Zealand/ Australian artist Helen Stewart. Her painting Street Scene, Wellington (Lot 36 ), had lighthearted joie de vivre about it, with a sailor walking along with women on each arm, an old fashioned delivery cart on the busy street, adjacent to the more modern tram; busy people on a bustling street. It is reminiscent of the works of Sydney artists Roland Wakelin and Grace Cossington-Smith and with the inclusion of the green tram, rather than the maroon Wellington ones from the same period, I can’t help but wonder if this is a Sydney street scene. Sadly it’s not joining my collection, but well known Auckland collectors who were bidding in the room now get the pleasure of enjoying it every day. It realized $17,000 against a $15,000 low estimate and compared to what a similar work by Grace Cossington-Smith would make, it seems like a great buy.
The undoubtable star of the show in the auction last night was Pipiwharauroa over Te Henga 1974 by Don Binney (Lot 67 ). The work had received a lot of media attention and was billed as a ‘recently discovered long lost masterpiece’ by the artist as it had been in the same Auckland collection since 1980. Painted at Binney’s favourite location of Te Henga on the West Coast, the shining cuckoo soaring above the rugged landscape ticked a lot of the boxes for a major painting by the artist. The estimate of $450,000-$650,000 would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, when top examples were selling between $200,000-$300,000. A couple in the room successfully bid against others on the floor and the sheets to win the lot at $500,000 and paid the second highest price for the artist at auction.
The record for Michael Smither was broken for the second time this year by IAC, after they successfully took the top price in their August sale for St Francis and the Wolf which realized $240,000. This time, Sea Wall and Kingfisher 1967 (Lot 70 ) dating from a desirable period of the artist’s work was on offer. This work had an even stronger provenance than the Binney, as it was originally sold by the important Wellington dealer Peter McLeavey to the current vendor’s parents in 1969. The bidding on the lot opened well under the low estimate of $250,000 at $150,000 and this engaged enough buyers for it to move quickly forward and ended up selling for $285,000 setting a new record for both Michael Smither and a living New Zealand artist.
The most interesting and hotly contested work on the night was the Matisse inspired painting by Douglas MacDiarmid Reclining Nude c.1947 (Lot 44 ). The artist is not usually the subject of a bidding frenzy in the auction room, but this work had the X factor and a lot going for it. Multiple phone and room bidders went crazy for the painting, at one stage calling out thousand dollar rises to knock out the other bidders and the work eventually sold to the phone for $7,500 against a $3,000 reserve.
This was another successful night for IAC who will be wanting to wrap this sale up quickly as they have managed to schedule another auction before the end of the year. The sale realized over $2 million (hammer) this total including some works sold on the day after the sale.
NB. All prices are hammer price only and do not include buyer’s premium of 20.12% incl GST.
