Yes, we were all allowed back into the saleroom for Deutscher and Hackett’s final sale of the year- an amalgam offering of Important Women Artists + Selected Australian and International Fine Art. Following double-dosing rules, a small audience trickled back. But they were raring to go and compete against those hiding behind their computer screens or along impersonal telephone lines.
There was plenty on offer, and the numbers show that many records were broken. As has been reiterated for some time, the secondary market is re-evaluating the currency of female artists who have quietly contributed to the last hundred years of the cultural life of Australia. Deutscher and Hackett shaped (and even marketed) their November auction to test the continued strength of this. As Chris Deutscher commented post-sale: ‘This auction has been a long time in the making’. His comments refer not only to the covid interventions that have prevented live audiences, but also embrace the current re-appraisal of major works by our women artists.
But it is not just any secondary market works by female artists that are of interest here. Paintings have to be able to speak to modern audiences with imagery and a painterliness that still resonates right now—that looks, in a word, contemporary. Grace Cossington Smith’s Still Life with Chair, 1962, (Lot 13 ) set a new record for the artist with a hammer price of $650,000. It radiated Van-Gough-like staccatos of colour in a timeless set-up of bottles, jugs and drapery that brilliantly researches how to configure the picture plane. It looks like it could have been painted yesterday by a young contemporary artist ex VCA. The next Cossington Smith, (Lot 14 ), of a similar size, but earlier in her career, achieved a hammer of only $100,000. It’s post-service depiction of preacher Samuel Marsden amongst a parade of female parishioners connects less to a contemporary narrative.
For me, one of the highlights of the auction was a modest oil on composition board, Australian Native Pear, etc, 1942 (Lot 4 ) by Margaret Preston. It had the look and feel of the work of a young millennial indigenous artist and was a steal at $80,000 hammer. Clarice Beckett continued her sweep of auction house records with The Tan, South Yarra, 1925 (Lot 8 ) achieving a hammer of $240,000, eclipsing her previous record set in April 2021 by $100,000. This lot fell to a determined room bidder after a long-running battle with the telephones. Bessie Davidson’s large oil on plywood, Lecture au Jardin, c1935, (Lot 10 ) also set a record at $660,000. Also doubling her previous record, Sally (Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda) Gabori’s beautifully gestural Dibirdibi Country, 2011, (Lot 25 ) found a new home on the internet at $65,000.
As the auction progressed, the previously standard fare of paintings of women through the eyes of male artists started to lose traction. Passed in were: Tom Roberts wood panel oil, A Modern Andromeda, 1891-2, (Lot 31 ) with a $400,000 low estimate; Charles Conder’s Dorothy-Daughter of John Stevens Esq, 1890, (Lot 32 ) with a low estimate of $150,000; and two Rupert Bunny oils (Lot 39 ) and (Lot 40 ) depicting society women under parasols—with low estimates of $120,000 and $80,000 respectively. Auctioneer Roger McIlroy wryly quipped that these ‘were not modern enough’.
The central section of the auction held a tightly curated range of international works. A magnificent oil from the Murdoch collection by Scottish colourist painter Samuel John Peploe, A Breezy Day, Iona, c1924, (Lot 41 ) exceeded expectations with a hammer price of $160,000 against a $100-$150,000 estimated range. British sculptor Lynn Chadwick’s male/female bronze—a partnership with attitude—exceeded its conservative $100,000 upper estimate to sell for a hammer price of $170,000. Again, these pieces look comfortable in our contemporary culture and have outlasted shifts in social attitudes.
Which brings us to the contemporary: Fresh from last week’s sold out opening at Station in Melbourne, there was plenty of room and telephone bidder enthusiasm for Reko Rennie’s fluorescent takes on urban aboriginality. Untitled (Red), 2012 (Lot 68 ) and Untitled (Orange), 2012 (Lot 69 ) exceeded top estimates of $15,000 to set a new record at $19,000 for the orange coat of ‘arms’.
Celebrity restauranteur Shannon Bennett offered twelve lots from his lovingly-collected holdings. A few fell though the cracks of the relatively conservative secondary market in Australia for contemporary art. I have written of these cracks many times before. The appetite for post 1970 secondary market work in Australia is very tame compared with the feeding frenzy for newly-minted contemporary artists that Christies and Sothebys enjoy in London for Frieze Week every October. British artist Yinka Shonibare’s delightfully-dressed sculptural figure Food Faerie, 2010, weighed down by the chattels of food trade, yet freed with wings of desire, failed to find a buyer even with a humble estimate of $200,000. (Shonibare’s work is a regular standout at Frieze.) However, the telephones flocked to corner an apocalyptic Peter Booth Untitled, 2007, oil on linen (Lot 79 ) for $140,000, and, at the lower end of the market, created a new $9,000 record for Stieg Persson’s oil on linen painting Alsace, 2008, (Lot 85 ). This very white work was apparently created after Steig’s dining experience at Vue de Monde where he figured the painting’s format through the arrangement of bones on a plate.
On my count there were fourteen high-price records for artists on the night: Vida Lahey $85,000 (Lot 7 ); Clarice Beckett $240,000 (Lot 8 ); Bessie Davidson $660,000 (Lot 10 ); Josephine Muntz Adams $60,000 (Lot 12 ); Grace Cossington Smith $650,000 (Lot 13 ); Mirka Mora $140,000 (Lot 17 ); Margaret Olley $170,000 (Lot 19 ); Sally Gabori $65,000 (Lot 25 ); Reko Rennie $19,000 (Lot 69 ); Callum Morton $24,000 (Lot 81 ); Stieg Persson $9,000 (Lot 85 ); Florence Hayward $11,000 (Lot 99 ); Criss Canning $42,000 (Lot 110 ) and Eric Wilson $85,000 (Lot 45 ).
The sale total was $11.33 million (IBP) with 84% of the lots sold by number and 111% sold by value.
Prices quoted are hammer prices and do not include buyers’ premium unless otherwise noted.
