The auction, Important Early and Rare NZ Investment Art held by International Art Centre in Auckland on July 28 grossed $NZ1.2 million plus premium or about $NZ250,000 less than these thrice yearly sales usually command.
The reduction was attributed to a "technical" factor - the absence of the auction house to come up with a saleable second colonial painting in the six figure range that would find a ready buyer.
Frederick Goldie's Maori portrait, The Aristocrat Te Kamaka, Ngati Maniapoto Tribe, Aged 90 Years just crested over its reserve (and lower estimate of $NZ250,000) to make $NZ253,000. But in the past two sales IAC had two such pictures not one.
A pair of portraits by Gottfried Lindauer, Chief and Chieftainess Ngatai, went unsold after being bid to $NZ160,000 which was well short of the $NZ200,000 to $NZ300,000 estimates..
This was not surprising as they had been up before, were dull and Lindauer does not enjoy anything like the celebrity of Goldie.
The auction, however, attracted a big crowd (more than 200) and about 90 per cent of the mostly traditional 135 lot offering found ready homes among bidders in the room.
There was not much evidence of new and young buyers in what was very much a sea of grey. Some spontaneous bidders without buying numbers were told that their bids were OK because they were known to the auctioneer. The older money which buys traditional art obviously has survived the recession.
If it was not sloshing out of the bank accounts - most successful bids tended to be at or around the lower estimates - at least the old boys and gals had come out on the off chance on a cold winter's night to attend the sale.
The provenance of some of the works, the estate of one of the great collectors of traditional NZ art Sir James Fletcher, certainly helped.
Half a dozen works, none admittedly of any great value, came from this direction. These works did not reflect gloriously on his taste as it seemed the Fletcher family was simply pruning the collection of lesser works.
Nicholas Chevalier's Leslie Hills Station, Canterbury, a large watercolour painted in the 1860s was the best performer making $NZ30,000 against estimates of $NZ35,000 to $NZ45,000.
Another estate watercolour Alfred Sharpe's Cox's Creek, West End Road, Westmere (dated 1887) sold to a room bidder of $NZ26,500 against estimates of $NZ30,000 to $NZ40,000. Despite being an Australian view, Sharpe's larger Speers Point and Lake Macquarie, Newcastle, NSW made $NZ52,000 which was within the estimates of $NZ45,000 to $NZ65,000.
The attraction of a simple wooden hut in the middle of a landscape which was the subject of this last work may be lost on Australians. But one such, by Rita Angus, has been voted the most popular New Zealand painting. Also, as a popular TV advertisement across the Tasman also points out, in New Zealand there is no Yeti. According to the advertisement, lost hikers need their huts and their rescue services when, collapsed by the wayside, a friendly yeti picks them up them up, carries them off to a cave and lights a log fire for them.
Two watercolours by Nicholas Chevalier, a colonial artist who NZ shares in importance with Australia, attracted unsuccessful bids well below their estimates due to difficulties in identifying the landscapes with either continent.
The auction included three watercolours by Colonel Robert Henry Wynyard, which are rare as he had other things to do during his career in NZ. He was a prime mover in the nation's constitutional change during which he spent 20 stormy months as acting Governor. This was in conjunction with a military career as commander of the Imperial forces in New Zealand. A small watercolour by him, Albert Barracks, Auckland, 1850 sold at a mid estimate $NZ52,000. A watercolour view of the Bay of Islands fared similarly making $NZ23,500, but the third watercolour failed to sell.
Albert Barracks, Auckland had come from Australia which once again fulfilled its role as a traditional source of material and serendipity for the art trade. All eight works by John Clarke Hoyte, whose works are being constantly being found in Australia sold, if not at quite the great heights in real terms they made in the 1980s.
One was also sold "subject" to the bid being accepted (which it was) after the auction..
Pink Terraces, Rotomahana, estimated to make $NZ20,000 to $NZ30,000 went to a phone bidder for $NZ37,500. The price was not an insignificant achievement, however, as the best auction price for his terrace views was $NZ45,100 given for a pair in 1995.
Hoyte painted both the pink and white terraces, which disappeared in an eruption in 1886, repeatedly, and they seldom fail to find a home albeit at varying prices reputedly relating to their differing credentials. The top selling work at the IAC sale had four men in one of the canoes pictured. Hoyte is said to have valued his work according to the number of men in his canoes and this was a high number. Hoyte's less familiar (and therefore rarer) other views have sold for $NZ110,000.
A serious piece of Kiwiana marrying two great Trans Tasman artistic talents failed to sell when expatriate Raymond Ching's watercolour portrait of Kiri te Kanawa (estimated at $NZ15,000 to $NZ25,000) attracted bidding only up to a clearly inadequate $NZ5,000. In Victorian photographic sepia style it was not a flattering portrait and had been up before.
Goldie's Self Portrait made $NZ51,000 which was short of the $NZ60,000 to $NZ80,000 estimate. From the rostrum the auctioneer, Richard Thomson, distanced the company from any categorical statement that the work was a Goldie self-portrait, However, the later report that the work had been purchased by the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington suggested that the attribution had to be substantial.
Colonial paintings in a designer-challenging oval format were well represented in the sale as they are in NZ art. On plates, shells or canvases, depicting islands, geysers and the terraces, these sold readily if as expected.
The related market in sunsets and sunrises thrived likewise. John Gibb's 1886 oil Morning, Otago Heads made the low estimate of $NZ15,000 to a NZ buyer on the phone on a holiday in Scotland. At $NZ5,100 William Menzies-Gibbs early 20th century oil Fading Light, Canterbury made $NZ100 over its low estimate.
Expatriated Felix Kelly's mid-career (1967) surrealist painting Steamboat House, Mississippi sold for a disappointing $NZ21,000 (the estimate was $NZ25,000 to $NZ35,00O) and there was no bid on a work by another NZ surrealist, Edward Bullmore (estimated $NZ12,000 to $NZ18,000).
Bullmore's Transition No.3 showed a male figure with his hands over his eyes as if to shield himself from the lack of transition in the New Zealand market away from glaring sunsets and the souvenir world of ovalitis to more serious matters. This would have been a hard call on a nation gloomy and down on its luck, in a recession biting much harder than across the Tasman.
