The film crew at Smith & Singer would not go away empty handed of worthwhile footage for their Clarice Beckett documentary, with The Yellow Bush (Lot 1 ) estimated at $20,000-30,000 and The Boat Sheds (Lot 2 ) estimated at $80,000-100,000.
The more modest lot 1 sold for $42,000, well above its high estimate of $30,000. It was however the highly atmospheric lot 2 that was most strongly sought by room and phone bidders alike, and it achieved a new, and perhaps not surprising, auction record for this artist of $270,000.
In the now usual way of major Australian art auction catalogue line-ups of ladies first, Hilda Rix Nicholas’ evocative Arab Lantern, 1914 (Lot 4 ), sold for $75,000, just above its expectations of $50,000-70,000, whilst Ethel Carrick’s similarly themed and dated A Market in Kairouan, ca 1911 (Lot 5 ), sold on its low estimate of $180,000.
Gentlemen artists then took centre stage, with an early Thursday Island painting by Ray Crooke from 1960 (Lot 7 ) finding considerable favour with bidders: it sold for $85,000 on hopes of $50,000-70,000.
No betrayals were in sight from bidders on Justin O’Brien’s The Kiss of Judas, 1974 (Lot 8 ): with estimates of $60,000-80,000, considerably more than 30 pieces of silver were paid, selling for $100,000 in the end.
Perhaps the provenance of Sir Warwick and Lady Fairfax helped John Perceval’s Uriarra Crossing ACT, 1965 (Lot 10 ) swamp its $45,000-65,000, when it eventually sold for $110,000.
From the start of the previews, it looked like Ralph Balson’s ground-breaking abstract Painting No. 13, 1941 (Lot 13 ) was going to do well, especially with moderate hopes of $100,000-150,000. However, it also presented us with the arbitrage story of the year, as Painting No. 13 had been offered in a John Nicholson’s auction in the UK in February this year with estimates of just £400-600, where it eventually sold for £9,000 hammer price (and probably regarded as the sleeper of the sale). The very savvy finder and seller of this painting was duly rewarded for their sleuthing skills, when the highly sought oil on cardboard sold to a lady in the room for $350,000.
Even though very strong results were being recorded across the board, it wasn’t all plain sailing. A roadblock of sorts was avoided with one of Jeffrey Smart's five works in the sale: After Panel of Studies for Autobahn in the Black Forest, 1979 (Lot 14 ) with estimates of $200,000-250,000 did not quite get a buyer under the hammer, it sold a little later during the auction for its low estimate.
A new term didn’t start however for The New School II, 2004 (Lot 23 ). This for Smart is an unusually large painting measuring 94 x 151 cm, but it failed to find a new master on the night on $600,000-800,000 hopes. It was a similar story for Farmhouse On Hill, 2004 (Lot 32 ) with no-one there on the night to buy the farm.
However a neat slice of New York real estate, New York (View from the Artist’s Window), (Lot 33 ) also from 2004, found much more favour with collectors, happy to push the price well above estimates of $100,000-140,000 to sell for a lofty $200,000.
Four works by Albert Tucker achieved excellent results, particularly the two major paintings: Gamblers, 1990 (Lot 15 ) sold for $390,000 on estimates of $250,000-350,000. This was matched by the much earlier dated Explorers and Cockatoos, 1968 (Lot 25 ), which sold for $450,000, surpassing the high hopes by $50,000.
The four modestly sized gouache on card works by Lin Onus (lot 19, lot 20, lot 21, lot 22) consigned by Melbourne Airport swam way to their new homes last night for hammer prices between $65,000 and $100,000.
There was no low hanging fruit to be had with Brett Whiteley’s brightly coloured The Dove in the Mango Tree, 1984 (Lot 23 ), as very competitive bidding ensued on the phone and in the room, with a room bidder finally securing his prize for $1.6 million on hopes of $900,000-1,200,000. This places the Dove among the top ten prices for a Brett Whiteley painting.
Works by Australian impressionist master Frederick McCubbin at all levels shone a light on the artist’s talent, with two major works selling for major prices, in particular A Forest Glade, 1913 (Lot 27 ), which had once been in the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery, for more than 50 years in fact. Estimated at $500,000-700,000, it sold very well for $650,000, whilst the wonderfully enigmatic The Letter, 1884 (Lot 29 ), with the artist’s sister as model and held since its creation in the collection of the family of the artist, sold for $420,000, above its expectations of $300,000-400,000.
It seems that the appreciation and prices for paintings by Arthur Streeton are moving ever upwards, with recent sales of works produced overseas, namely The Grand Canal, 1908, (Venice), achieving a new overall auction record price for the artist at Deutscher + Hackett in April this year of $2,5 million ($3 million IBP), and The Centre of the Empire, 1902 (London) selling for $1.2 million just this month, again at Deutscher + Hackett. Adding to this the two sales of Streeton pictures last night, we may be experiencing a re-set of Streeton’s pricing.
Let’s look firstly at Cairo, 1897 (Lot 30 ): this painting sold in August 2019 for $120,000, on estimates of $80,000-120,000. Offered now in the Smith & Singer auction with hopes of $150,000-200,000, it sold for an astonishing $575,000, putting paid to the notion that Streeton’s overseas paintings play second fiddle to his Australian works.
In the same vein, prior to the sale of Grand Canal, the highest recorded price for one of Streeton’s highly regarded “Venice paintings” was for The Giudecca Lagoon, Venice, c1938, sold in 2009 for $500,000. Evening, Venice, 1908 (Lot 28 ) represents an extraordinary example of one of Streeton’s honeymoon pictures, and its high hopes of $500,000-700,000 did not disappoint: with several $50,000 incremental bids from the internet, in the room and on the phones, the Evening closed on $825,000.
The highest price at auction for one of Charles Blackman’s Schoolgirl Series is $700,000 for the painting There Was, 1953, sold by Sotheby’s in May 2012. Mainly however it is Blackman’s Alice in Wonderland Series which achieve the highest values when offered for sale, like Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, 1956 sold by Sotheby’s (now Smith & Singer) in November 2017 for $1.55 million.
Preceding the “Alice” paintings by three years, it seems that prices for the grittier “Schoolgirl” images are on the move upwards. In the Lane, 1953 (Lot 36 ), came with exceptional provenance and exhibition history, and estimates of $180,000-220,000, and in the end with an exceptional price of $340,000 to match.
Del Kathryn Barton’s rise continues: her previous record price for Of Pollen, 2013 set at Sotheby’s in May 2018, was surpassed by the curiously titled Wild Carrot Dream, 2015 (Lot 47 ). On what now look like modest estimates of $140,000-180,000, the Dream sold for $330,000, $20,000 more than the former record.
It was a trip back to the 1980s, at least pricewise for J.H. Scheltema, a more traditional and somewhat out of favour artist. His Bullock Team in the Forest of Canungra, Queensland (Lot 61 ) was estimated conservatively at $8,000-12,000, however was strongly bid on the phone and in the room, selling spectacularly well for $65,000.
Arbitrage need not necessarily span continents but can be accomplished even within the suburbs of our fair city of Sydney, as Roland Wakelin’s RMS Aquitania, Sydney, 1943 (Lot 74 ) demonstrated. The painting was sold at a Lawsons auction on 27th August this year for $8,500, below hopes of $10,000-15,000, and with estimates doubled to $20,000-30,000 at Smith & Singer, RMS Aquitania was one of the most sought after paintings of the night, steaming ahead to the jaw-dropping price of $95,000. With cruise ships flagged to return to Sydney Harbour very soon, Roland Wakelin’s ocean liner clearly struck a nerve with many.
Martin Gallon’s gentle and endearing auctioneering style has been a constant with Sotheby’s Australia and now Smith & Singer for many years. Martin has been working in the art industry for over 40 years, with 17 years at Sotheby’s in the UK before moving to Melbourne. Yesterday was his last fine art sale in Australia, and a very successful one too, as he will relocate back to the UK next year. Always eloquent and engaging, we are sure that Martin will be sadly missed.
The sale grossed $12.2 million including buyer's premium, with 81% sold by number and 131.6% sold by value.
