Art Auction Sale Reviews

This year could have been a disastrous year for the visual arts market, given a pandemic leading to stay at home orders, lock-downs and closed borders, and auction houses specifically mentioned by the Prime Minister as one of the businesses that could no longer be open for personal visits. But art does matter it seems: artists’ sell-out shows in commercial galleries and exceptional as well as record results in fine art auctions made headlines. 

Patrick Corrigan AM is a renowned philanthropist and collector/patron. Drawn from his prestigious collection of Indigenous photography, Deutscher and Hackett’s online select sale of Contemporary Indigenous Photography from the Corrigan Collection provided a unique opportunity to acquire forty works in this specialist field carrying notable provenance.

At its recent peak, The Corrigan Collection of Indigenous Photography (The Collection) comprised over one hundred images by eighteen pre-eminent exponents of Indigenous photography and multi-media practice working from the 1980s through to today; a comprehensive catalogue of acclaimed artists with many of their most celebrated representative works.

On Thursday night in Sydney, Menzies offered the painting with the highest auction estimates for an Australian work ever: $5 million to $7 million. Brett Whiteley’s Henri’s Armchair, 1974-75, was presented in a stand-alone black tie event. It was attended by vendor Elizabeth Evatt and family members with front row seats and film crews and press galore, a rarity nowadays in the auction room, as well as a limited number of collectors and industry insiders.

With all bar one top lot selling on the night, Menzies’ auction of Australian & International Fine Art & Sculpture produced a strong clearance of 84% by lot. Aided by 30 or so works that surpassed their odds, the sale totalled nearly $7 million dollars, representing 106% by value (incl. BP).

Smith & Singer presented 74 lots in their last fine art auction in a challenging 2020 year. The last 20 offerings contained an exquisite collection of modern and contemporary Australian art from the estate of the late Vera Kolman; Smith & Singer had also sold a selection of high quality jewellery from this estate in September.

The fine art auction achieved a total of $6.329 million including buyer’s premium ($5.157 million hammer price), on pre-sale estimates of $7.216 million to $10.283 million. Overall, the percentage was 73% sold by numbers and 71% by value.

Deutscher and Hackett’s final sale of the year was ostensibly split into two parts: A finely curated section of Twenty Classics of Australian Art followed by a small group of Important Australian and International Fine Art. All employed real live viewing but strictly distanced bidding via phones and internet. This novel approach succeeded in dispersing 88% by lot.

One of the most important examples of modern Australian art to appear at auction in many years – and with a catalogue estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million – the painting  was purchased journalist, author, writer and critic Clive Turnbull soon after the artist’s 1942 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney exhibition and held in the family ever since.

Turnbull was a highly respected writer who worked on the Argus newspaper before in 1932 joining the Melbourne Herald where 10 years later he was appointed art critic. So keen was his interest and knowledge of contemporary art that the newspaper’s chief Sir Keith Murdoch consulted Turnbull about his own art purchases.

Going to the Pictures is typical of Drysdale’s depiction of outback Australia at that time and, as one of his best paintings, was included in every major exhibition dedicated to his oeuvre since then, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1960 and the National Gallery of Victoria in 1997. 

Another top work is Fred Williams (1927-1982) Hillside at Lysterfield II 1967 (lot 8) which, from the mid-1960s, was near his home and a regular destination for outdoor painting trips.

Affordable art and the chance for first time collectors to buy works from name artists are important highlights for Melbourne-based Gibson’s Auctions as they continue to offer online auction possibilities to auction goers at a time when the city continues to be locked down with COVID-19 restrictions. The company’s Australian & International Art auction will be live streamed on Sunday October 25 with buyers able to bid online, over the phone or by an absentee bid.

Jewellery, art  and other collectables belonging to the late Tony White – Sydney architect turned jeweller – will be auctioned from 2pm Sunday October 11 by Bonhams at 36-40 Queen Street, Woollahra New South Wales.

White trained formally in architecture and graduated in 1965 from Sydney University before practising his craft for five years in Sydney and Melbourne.

Every country has its own market with homegrown art built often over centuries, with little transfer to other markets. An Australian collector is as unlikely to purchase a painting by Swiss masters Ferdinand Hodler or Albert Anker, and a Swiss collector would perhaps not outlay the sums required to acquire a painting by Arthur Streeton or Tom Roberts.

An American collector may show scant interest in the works of Swedish painter Ernst Josephson, whilst a Swede may not give a second glance to Frederic Remington’s American Western scenes of Indians. Affandi, one of Indonesia’s most famous artists, would be of little interest to your average Russian art collector, while Ivan Aivazovsky’s Russian winter landscapes will hardly resonate with an art collector based in the Tropics.

For some Melbourne-based businesses, COVID-19 is having unexpected impacts – and none more so than in the art and decorative arts auction industry. While others have been struggling for months with harsh coronavirus lockdown restrictions, auction houses that have been able to  move their sales online have often achieved surprising results. So it was for Leski Auctions latest two-day sale on September 26 and 27 when the comprehensive eclectic collection of former National Gallery of Victoria curator, the late Geoffrey Burke, went under the hammer.

A few years ago, 30 people at a major fine art auction, like at the Smith and Singer sale on Wednesday evening, September 2, would have looked like a looming disaster. However, stand-in auctioneer, Stuart Davies, chief auctioneer of Sotheby’s International Realty, assured the audience that they were prepared for a large number of phone and internet bidders – which has become the new norm in the art auction room in 2020 – and asked for patience.

Which was indeed required: the 55 lots took close to two hours to sell, but it was worth the time for vendors and auction house alike, as the sale generated a total hammer price of $5.044 million, with 120% sold by value and 87% sold by number, and numerous paintings sold for double the price they had achieved just a few years prior.

In their fine art auction to be held live on 16 August in Sydney, Davidson Auctions prominently features the David Angeloro Collection of 20th century Australian sculpture. This follows on from the very successful offering of the collection of female Australian artists from this collector last year.

In the sale comprising a total of 468 lots, several important exponents of sculpture are included, among them Rayner Hoff, Barbara Tribe, Tom Bass, Arthur Fleishmann and Dora Ohlfsen.

With Melbourne in lockdown, bidding was limited to absentee, phone or online, but it didn’t prevent keen competition among the buying public with an incredible 1400 registrations (including a massive number of phone bids) and a clearance rate of 98 per cent by lot and 334 per cent by value.

Fred Williams’ ‘Hummock in a Landscape’, 1967 (lot 7) set a huge new record for the artist, selling for a dramatic $2,300,000 hammer on estimates of $1,400,000 to $1,800,000, while Rover Thomas’s ‘Baragu Country’, 1989 (lot 76) sold for $100,000 hammer against a $50,000- $70,000 estimate. Both these works captured the immense strength and beauty of the Australian landscape through the subtle displacement of curved landforms. Both could be seen as monumental vertical-format portraits of the Australian landscape that firmly assert: this is our Country

A painting by an artist sometimes known as The Painter of Black has surfaced in Australia and been sold in Paris for €3.24 million ($A5.26 million) in an auction sale on July 10. The work is an abstract by Pierre Soulages who was born 1919 and is a  member of the School of Paris. The painting had been in the same Australia private collection since 1953.

Forsaking the partner’s previous association with Sotheby’s, the painting which had remained hidden for many years was consigned by Smith and Singer to Christie’s, which sold the work for a price that was comfortably over the estimates.

The name Joel is synonymous with Australia's antique and arts auction industry. In 1919 Leonard Joel opened his doors in Melbourne's CBD and son Graham, who was no less of an enthusiast, became a recognised doyen of the auction industry – regarded by many as the driving force behind Australia's art market boom of the 1970s and 1980s.

We can’t help feeling that currently there are more buyers than sellers of art, at least in the secondary market; perhaps a little like the real estate market with which one can often draw parallels.

The Australian Art Sales Digest recorded art sales in Australia of $111.3 million for 2019, representing 12,320 artworks at auction, compared with a total of just over $30 million sales and 4,791 artworks for  the first half of 2020.

The picture is similar in New Zealand, where art auction sales totalled NZ$28.3 million in 2019, based on 4,077 artworks, while to date, sales have reached just NZ$7.8 million, with 1,981 sales.

Peter and Renate Nahum need no introduction to art collectors the world over. Australians know them as avid fans of Aboriginal art – with a collection that spans more than 20 years.  

This collection will now be available to other enthusiasts from 7pm on Wednesday July 15 at 105 Commercial Road, South Yarra when Deutscher and Hackett auction  more than 50 of the paintings as part of its Important Australian and International Fine Art sale.

As art advisors, we are always discussing the value of provenance, that is the history of a painting’s ownership. Provenance covers not just authenticity issues, but also the perceived importance of previous owners. One source of art of particular appeal to private collectors and public institutions alike are artists’ estates, that is artworks acquired directly from the family of the artist.

Authenticity of the art, even when unsigned, can naturally be assured in these instances, plus there is an added feel-good factor in acquiring an artwork that has come directly from the artist via a descendant of the artist himself or herself.

After holding its first auction for 2020 in February, like many other Australian auction houses Menzies was obliged to hold off on its next Australian & International Fine Art & Sculpture sale until the deadly conditions caused by the coronavirus pandemic that swept the globe improved nationally.

Although the crisis is far from over in many other countries – and Australia is still facing troublesome hotspots with lockdowns in some Melbourne suburbs – Menzies is preparing for its forthcoming July 9 sale from 6.30pm at 12 Todman Avenue, Kensington in Sydney.

Of late, there has been much discussion about the success of online art sales at lower levels of the market. However, we have been holding our breath for the most important test, at the top end of the Australian art market. Would that confidence extend to the highest echelon of art buyers prepared to spend several hundred thousand dollars?

The first major art sale delayed until 24 June in Sydney, was not just a test of the market, but also for Smith & Singer: would the change from the Sotheby’s brand to the directors’ last names impact on their previous successful sales record?

In the event, the newly branded Smith & Singer hardly skipped a beat. Limiting their lots to 59, they had far more bidders than they could accommodate.

An 1863 painting of a racehorse named General (lot 39) owned by Thomas Chirnside, a major Victorian landholder known for the historic Italianate mansion he built in the 1870s at Werribee, almost doubled its high $30,000 catalogue estimate when it changed hands for $56,120 (including buyer’s premium) at Gibson’s Art and Photography auction in Melbourne on Monday June 15.

The painting was featured on the catalogue front cover and was part of a pleasing result for the auction house, which held its first live auction with limited room numbers since the COVID-19 pandemic Australia-wide lockdown has begun to ease – selling 89 per cent by value of the works on offer.

Works from the estate of Australian artist David Boyd – part of a family dynasty of painters and sculptures that included such notaries as father Arthur Merric Boyd and brother Arthur – will see the auction light of day for the first time when newly established auction house Artmarketspace holds its inaugural auction from 5pm Sunday June 14 at 409 Malvern Road, South Yarra.

By the time the now 47-year-old Chirnside commissioned the painting, which the previous year had won the Geelong Steeplechase, the Victorian Turf Club Handicap Steeple and the Victorian Jockey Club Handicap Hurdles, he and his brother had amassed considerable land holdings throughout Victoria.

Their lasting contribution to Victorian history was the construction during the 1870s of an elaborate Italianate mansion at Werribee which continues as an important landmark to the present day.

THE Art Gallery of South Australia is paying around $1 million - its biggest ever individual outlay - for a painting which went through the saleroom just a year ago [in 1993] for $165,000.

But any embarrassment this might present is more likely to be with Sotheby's than with the director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Mr Ron Radford.

The picture was originally consigned by an institution with which Sotheby's chairman, Mr Alfred Taubman, has connections.

Extraordinary prices at auction continue to be paid for the two hottest living Australian female artists, Cressida Campbell and Del Kathryn Barton.

The night after their successful online only auction of the Pat Corrigan photography collection, Deutscher + Hackett produced what they titled “A Solo Auction Event”, the sale of one painting by Del Kathryn Barton Hugo (lot 1) which won the Archibald prize 2013 portraying acclaimed Australian actor Hugo Weaving.

There has been much discussion recently about the pressure on art auction houses with the implementation of Covid19 restrictions to viewing of art. However, there appears to be no lack of buyers, but not only this, prices achieved are significantly above the highest estimates set by the auctioneers. This general trend started in early April and continues.

Even though room audiences in major art auctions have shrunk over the last few years, no auctioneer would have been quite prepared for zero attendees for a major sale of fine art. Recently introduced rules on property inspections and art viewings as well as auctions to restrict gatherings of people meant that Leonard Joel managing director and auctioneer John Albrecht faced just that: a space devoid of room bidders.

In somewhat of a first, the auction house was completely reliant on phone and internet bidding to sell their carefully curated 100 artworks covering a large cross section of emerging and established Australian contemporary art. With consultation from Cameron Menzies, principal of Five Fifty Art Advisory, and direction from Olivia Fuller, head of art at Leonard Joel, the sale was ambitious even in a bull market and not without risk.

One of Australia's greatest art finds is on the march in the United States.

William Harnett's enchanting portrait of a negro boy playing soldiers is a star attraction of the exhibition, Facing History: the Black Image in American Art 1710-1940, now showing at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

The portrait is normally housed at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, but was selected for inclusion among the 100 paintings, sculptures and drawings executed by more than 60 artists chosen for the exhibition.

The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, which specialises in American art, put the exhibition together.

This latest effort, which ends in incremental stages from 10.30am Thursday April 23 features 127 photographic lots and follows an earlier Gregory sale by the Melbourne-based auction house in August last year.

Respected economists who once hesitated to use the "R" word are now using one beginning with "D" in their dire predictions of life after Covid-19. The crowds besieging Centrelink offices are cited as visual evidence that the world economy is on the threshold of not just a recession but a depression.

While the coronavirus lockdown removed live auction bidding, many of the Australia and New Zealand auction houses have continued sales with online-only auctions, while others have closed their doors until the crisis passes.

In 1980 New York antiquities dealer, Leonardo Patterson arrived in Australia with a portfolio of an estimated $2 million of pre-Columbian antiquities. At the time there were generous tax concessions for donation from private individuals to state galleries. He was able to persuade a number of business people to purchase the collection and donate it the NGV. The most desirable piece in the collection was the large stone Mayan Chacmool sculpture with an imputed value of $750,000.

Perhaps not since the time of World War II have Australians felt so strongly about the comforts of home, while many are trapped in overseas countries with little chance of returning quickly. Home then becomes a haven and shelter, a place to feel safe and secure. With share markets declining everywhere, perhaps we seek solace in the more tangible and perhaps comforting purchase of art to fill our walls whilst we work from home.

Panache amid pandemic: Deutscher and Hackett’s Important Australian Aboriginal Art sale on March 18 2020 in Melbourne sailed through with strong support across the board and an 80% clearance by lot on the night, securing 16 new artist records. A few after-sales bumped the tally to 83% and $2.4 million dollars (incl. BP).

Two magnificent collections of Australian Aboriginal art are the backbone for Deutscher and Hackett’s first stand-alone Aboriginal art auction in Melbourne for some time on Wednesday March 18 at their South Yarra rooms. The last major Aboriginal art sale to be held in Melbourne was the sale of Aboriginal Art from the Luczo Family Collection, USA, also conducted by Deutscher and Hackett in 2016.

Head of Aboriginal art Crispin Gutteridge says he is encouraged by strong responses to Aboriginal art in recent general sales but the fact that Melbourne’s Helene Teichmann collection (from the Western Australian Kimberleys region) and contemporary indigenous art from the Maclean collection – with a strong focus on the works from Arnhem Land communities – are being offered for auctioned was a deciding factor in holding the sale.

“Both these collections are very important with the latter collection including major examples of Yirrikala bark paintings from the Northern Territory and good sculptures,” he said.

Popular notions of Jackson Pollock, the American action painter, will have to be seriously revised if an exhibition which opens this week in Sydney is an indication.

The works in the exhibition, called 'Paintings by Jackson Pollock', surely are not those of the great Jackson Pollock we have come to know, the untidy neurotic genius who lived in a pig sty and painted Blue Poles.

But they are much too immaculate and uninteresting.

Yes, the auction season is off and racing with Menzies Melbourne sale on 27 February 2020 recording a clearance rate of 66% by lot on the night, but, like the DKB, realisations for the trophy paintings sometimes fell short of expectations as the headwinds of the last three days of stock market falls and escalating coronavirus fears appeared to sap buyer confidence. In the current environment, buyers practised ‘social separation’ and failed to place bids for market darlings such as Kelly, Shead, Blackman, Robinson and Kemp.

Wandering through the large colonial art collection at the Tasmanian Art Gallery and Museum, one is immediately assured of its gravitas and sense of history. Some of Australia’s most significant paintings reside here, including Benjamin Duterreau’s “The Conciliation” from 1840.

Tasmania has long been a natural magnet for artists, from John Glover through Tom Roberts and on to Fiona Hall today. John Glover’s Tasmanian landscapes dating back to the 1840s never fail to impress wherever they are shown, but seeing them in their home surroundings, they always appear that much more impressive in my view. Early vistas of Hobart appear equally commanding, with works by Henry Gritten, Knut Bull and Eugene von Guerard on display.

Chief executive officer Justin Turner describes the painting, which has never been auctioned before, as the best of her works to come onto the secondary market.

“It is on the catalogue cover and should set a new record for the artist, eclipsing the $378,200 including buyer’s premium achieved in May 2018 at Sotheby’s Australia’s sale for Of Pollen,” he said.

Openly Song was exhibited in January 2015 at Arndt Fine Art in Singapore and again at the Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria from November 2017 to March 2018.

“It is larger than the current record holding work and also has been referenced in six publications – more than Of Pollen,” Mr Turner said.

An announcement is expected to be made in Canberra shortly of the conclusion of a deal which could give the nation what is possibly the most important picture painted since Picasso’s Guernica.

The deal should establish a record price for an American painting.

The cost of the painting is understood be $US2million, equivalent to $A1.4 million [which was the exchange rate in August 1973], far in excess of anything that has ever been paid for any work of art.(?).

The painting cost the vendor US36,000.

The Commonwealth has been granted an option on the painting by its owner, New York collector and textile magnate Ben Heller.

Initially painted for his upcoming exhibition addressing climate change and extinction. Fantauzzo is one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists; a recipient of the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, the Archibald Packing Room Prize and the Archibald People’s Choice Award four times.

Vincent and his wife, Asher Keddie decided that, rather than wait for the exhibition, they wanted to contribute now and donate this piece to auction.

Once Upon A Time depicts the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger as an almost mythical creature, displaced, with its natural environment painted over in white; a poignant reminder that we often do not appreciate beauty until it's gone forever.

Fantauzzo said that “although the bushfire devastation is desperately sad, the response to it is incredibly inspiring.’ And, ‘amongst the sadness there is hope that the next generation, who are faced with a realistic fear about the climate, will create change.”