Like all Ainger's special sale catalogues, there are no estimates listed in the catalogue. This is unfortunate, but verbal estimates on individual lots can be obtained from the auctioneers. Aingers estimates of the total value of the lots in the estate including furniture between $800,000 and $1,200,000
Australian Colonial masters of the Melbourne Gallery School period include two Frederick McCubbins (1855 – 1917).
Dappled Sunlight, is a small painting of 30 x 38.5 cm, and accurately identifies the effect of harsh sunlight through thick shrubbery. It was most probably painted somewhere in surrounding areas of Heidelberg, and is estimated at $30,000 - 40,0000.
The second, more classical McCubbin is moderately titled Mrs. McCubbin and depicts the oft-painted Mrs. McCubbin in a flowing period gown, painted circa 1897 and estimated at $30,000 - 40,000.
The McCubbins were bought in 1972 and 1971 respectively from Joseph Brown Galleries.
Other Australian Colonial masters in the sale include an untitled but extremely ornately framed Walter Withers (1854 – 1914) depicting figures walking on a bush track, estimated at $30,000 - 40,000.
Emmanuel Phillips Fox's gloomy oil portrayal on canvas of the ‘Back Beach, Sorrento’, was purchased from Joseph Brown Galleries 7th May 1970.
A fellow peer of Fox’s at the Melbourne Gallery School, Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny (1864 – 1947), adorns the dining room of the Kingston house. The large (80 x 64 cm) painting entitled Models in the Garden, was purchased from Joseph Brown Galleries, as item number 24, in the Autumn Exhibition, 1972, for the rather modest sum of $2,000, and carries an estimate of $30,000 - 45,000.
Elioth Gruner’s (1882 – 1939), oil on canvas on board, entitled Blossom, is possibly the most aesthetically pleasing painting in the collection. The winner of seven Wynne Prizes, Gruner, captures the true wonder of nature’s miracle, the spring blossom.
This work is one of the more expensive additions to Mrs. Kingston’s collection from Joseph Brown Galleries, measuring 31 x 41.5 cm, and cost her $4,500, at Joseph Brown's Spring Exhibition of 1978, a sum equivalent to about $19,000 today, indexed at the average inflation rate for the period.
The hammer price will be the final arbiter of how the value of this work has fared in relation to inflation, but it should do much better than the quoted estimate of $15,000 - 20,000.
The Kingston collection includes two John Peter Russell’s, an artist featured in every collection influenced by Dr. Brown.
Souvenier de Cagnes 1920 and Flame Trees, Australia, 1928 were purchased in 1974 and 1977 respectively, both for the handsome price of $1,250 from Joseph Brown Galleries.
Both have impeccable provenance, with every period of their existence since execution, accounted for. They were both originally bequeathed directly from the artist’s collection to his son, John Alain Stobart Russell, and from there to Joseph Brown Gallery and Mrs. Kingston.
Although both are watercolour and pencil, given their provenance and relative rarity to the market in Australia, they should attract major buyer interest.
Three John de Burgh Perceval paintings on ceramic tiles highlight the vendor's love for all genres of art. They do not look out of place against the early colonialist and impressionist paintings, but rather create a palpable juxtaposition between the uniform and non-uniform.
Perceval signed and dated the three works in 1951. The largest of the three, encompasses 35 hand-painted ceramic tiles, and is 51 x 72 cm. Entitled ‘Beekeeper’, it was the last Perceval to join the Kingston collection. It was acquired by the late Neville Healey, a life-long friend and mentor to Kingston, on behalf of Kingston from a private collection. It completes a triumvirate of Percevals that illustrate scenes of pandemonium, in utterly everyday circumstances.
Ethel Carrick Fox’s Buying Flowers (59 x 80 cm) is likely to be the most anticipated painting offered in the sale, and depicts a charming Parisian flower market.
Masterfully painted, circa 1920, with the light streaming in from the background and lighting the foreground, the painting shows the vibrancy of a recovering post-war Parisian cultural identity.
Details of the painting's journey, from blank canvas, through to the it’s eventual packing and shipping by the famous Parisian firm of Lucien Lefebvre Foinet to Dr. Joseph Brown, (from where Kingston purchased the piece in 1973), are included on a label on the reverse.
This painting, item number 23 in Brown’s 1973 Autumn Exhibition, cost Kingston $1,500, less a 10% discount for her continued support of the gallery.
In April 2008, Sotheby's sold Carrick Fox’s Market Under Trees, with similar subject matter, but of larger (73 x 98.5 cm) size for $1,008,000 including buyers premium, a record price for the artist.
The modest estimate on Buying Flowers is $90,000 - 120,000.
Other artists included in the collection are: Danila Ivanoch Vassilieff (1897 – 1958), Donald Stuart Leslie Friend (1915 – 1989), Louis V Kahan (1905 – 2002), John H Glover (1767 – 1849), Vaughan Murray Griffin (1903 – 1992), Robert W. Johnson (1890 – 1964), Abram Louis Buvelot (1814 – 1888), William Buelow Gould (1803 – 1853), Ernest William Buckmaster (1897 – 1968) and among others, William Dobell (1899 – 1970)
This sale has all the ingredients of a blockbuster: a deceased estate to be sold in-situ, with fresh paintings that have not been seen in the market for the last 40 years supported by modest estimates, and it would not surprise if some of the works sold for two or three times the lower estimate.
