Crook For Some, But Rocky Punches Above His Weight

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday September 6, 2008

PETER FISH

With last week's big art auctions in Melbourne falling distinctly flat, there would have been wan faces among the canny punters who have been stashing away "investment art" in their personal superannuation funds, thinking the boom would go on for ever.

Pictures by big names such as Brett Whiteley, John Brack, Sidney Nolan, Fred Williams and John Olsen - which rank high on the investment tree - were among many works that went unsold at the prices vendors wanted.

Sotheby's, as the first cab off the rank with its auction on August 25, a Monday night, was first to feel the chill wind that has swept away some of the art market's boomtime illusions.

Its figures showed it sold 42 of the 87 works offered on the opening night of its two-day sale - the big night where most of the major works were offered. That's a 48.2 per cent sold ratio, well below the 60 to 70 per cent common at sales in the recent boom years.

Top price was Russell Drysdale's portrait of a nuggety farmer, Rocky McCormack, at $1.89 million, followed by Charles Conder's witty and pretty The Fatal Colors at $702,000. Of the two, only the Conder convincingly beat expectations, with a hammer price of $585,000 (which attracts 20 per cent buyer's premium) compared with an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. Highlighting the sombre tone overall, only a little more than half of the works sold were hammered at or above their lower estimates. And only a few, like the Conder, shot past the upper estimate - among them Nolan's Landscape - Man And Camel at $186,000, Charles Blackman's Vases at $50,400 and Nicholas Harding's Beach Life (Flag And Figures) at $15,000.

As for the unsolds, the significant works to go begging included John Glover's Moulting Lagoon ... (estimate $1.8 million to $2.2 million), Brack's The Return Of The Prodigal Son ($700,000 to $900,000), and a bunch of works estimated at $200,000-plus including Williams's Mason Falls, Whiteley's Staring At The Garden ... and Arthur Boyd's Shoalhaven With Flying Bird.

And this after Sotheby's - and the other auctioneers with big sales this week - would have been at pains to massage vendor expectations down to more sober levels. At least the auctioneer was able to claim a new artist record for Drysdale's Rocky portrait.

Sotheby's second session on the Tuesday was also patchy - even an example of the classic Max Dupain print Sunbaker failed to find a buyer, although a historic West Australian study, Edmund Henderson's The Knole, Fremantle ... brought an impressive $55,200 (did Kerry Stokes leave a bid on that one?).

The Tuesday following also saw Bonhams & Goodman join the fray, with casualties including a number of high-priced Nolan doodles from his early Bathers series passed in. Only one, Bather (At Sunset), found a new owner at $234,000, slightly below expectations. Albert Tucker lost a bit of his previously much-fancied form when Explorer And Cockatoos failed to live up to a $300,000 to $400,000 estimate. Drysdale's Country Woman also failed to sell despite hopes of $400,000 to $600,000.

But B&G would be happy with the $780,000 for Frederick McCubbin's Summer Morning, Kew and Whiteley's Galah at $324,000. In addition B&G raised nearly $2 million from the Julian and Miriam Sterling collection, including John Peter Russell's Belle Ile En Mer at $1.56 million. But even that would probably have gone higher in the boom.

A HAIRCUT FOR SOME

Deutscher and Hackett's major auction on August 27 appeared to get off to a better start than those of its rivals, but even here major works by Williams, McCubbin, Olsen and Jeffrey Smart went unwanted while quite a few paintings "took a haircut" compared with the catalogue estimates.

The catalogue cover, Brack's bilious-hued The Boucher Nude, failed to get away on the night but sold later for $1.5 million including premium. Other respectable prices included Whiteley's flamboyant View From The Window, Bali at $336,000, Lloyd Rees's Afternoon In Tuscany at $180,000 and Arthur Streeton's San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice at $150,000.

Boyd's Shoalhaven Riverbank, a large work from circa 1985, failed to get close enough to a $120,000 to $150,000 estimate while the small 1988 oil on copper of the same title looked to be a bargain with a sale at $18,000, trailing a $22,000 to $28,000 estimate.

Roland Wakelin's Landscape With Red Shed made its upper estimate at $24,000 - but less auctioneer's charges would have lost its vendor money on the $22,800 paid for it at Sotheby's late in 2006.

Overall, however, Deutscher and Hackett could justly claim to be pleased with clearance rates of 74 per cent by lot for their two-day sale, in a climate that had just taken a distinct turn for the worse.

WHARFIES' DELIGHTS

It's known as Barangaroo or the Hungry Mile and was once a stamping ground for starving wharfies, but there won't be too much hardship around the area this month when some of the nation's rarest and most valuable art, antiques and collectables goes on show. The year's big antique and art fair is to be held at Darling Harbour's Wharf 8, entry from Sussex Street, on September 17 to 21.

Prints, sculpture, silver and fascinating historic material are among the attractions, along with a feast of fancy furniture, glass, oriental rugs, numismatic items and Tibetan and Himalayan art.

Well worth a look will be a most opulent silver-gilt shield or sideboard dish by the eminent London maker Paul Storr, dating from 1817. Some 79 centimetres in diameter and weighing 358 troy ounces (more than 10 kilograms) it's a drinker's delight, featuring a central design of Bacchus and Ariadne in a chariot pulled by centaurs, flanked by riot of Bacchanalian grapevines, masks and musical trophies. One of four known (its peers are all in in royal or other notable collections), it sold for $300,000 in October 2004.

As well as paintings by many renowned artists there will be a gallery-full of prints by John Hall Thorpe, the one-time apprentice at Herald publisher Fairfax, who went on to fame and fortune in Britain in the 1920s and '30s, and whose distinctive coloured woodblock flower studies are in vogue for today's interiors. They are still affordable.

There will be all sorts of Australiana, including examples of the rare bank notes produced for journalist William Lane's 1890s socialist utopia New Australia in Paraguay in the 1890s, and the interesting Arabic-inscribed Gallipoli currency issued to Allied forces ahead of the landings at Anzac Cove. (Arab-ophiles can hunt down more Arabic overprinting on notes at coin dealer Monetarium, which is offering siege notes from Khartoum in 1884, some even bearing the signature of the doomed General Charles Gordon).There's even a copy of Australia's first printed poem, Susanna Watts's Original Poems And Translations from 1801, and a an attractive "goldfields" gold brooch made in Bendigo in the 1860s.

Just for the record, the fair is being held under the auspices of the Australian Antique and Art Dealers Association, the country's premier art trade organisation, and everything on show is fully vetted and guaranteed - which is a plus in world where fakes and forgeries are not unknown.

ENDEAVOUR TREASURE-HUNT

Beggin' your pardon, Cap'n, but is it your boomerang or not? Sadly, we can't ask the doughty navigator James Cook or his wife, whose estate is said to have yielded the battered old boomerang to be offered by Christie's in London this month. But it certainly makes a difference to the price, with this one carrying expectations of #40,000 ($86,000) while a normal vintage boomerang rarely commands more than $1000 or so - ask Bill Evans, who sold a bunch of them at a Randwick sale on August 18 (though none had pretensions to an 18th-century origin).

Christie's says the boomerang - along with two New Holland clubs from a similar origin offered separately - was "likely to have been collected" on Cook's first voyage, between April and August 1770. It says the provenance is to Cook's wife, Elizabeth, via her executor and residuary beneficiary John Bennett, thence by descent. It also notes that very few artefacts survive from the first voyage - perhaps not surprising since the Endeavour offered scarcely room to swing a cat. The catalogue quotes Banks's Endeavour journal on an early encounter with boomerangs in Botany Bay in April 1770. It seems the lads threw out a net from a sandy beach on the northern side of the bay - presumably close to what is now the Caltex oil refinery - where they netted more fish than they could eat. There they were joined by a group of "Indians" brandishing weapons which Banks likened to pikes and a "scymetar" or scimitar.

Surely it's not too much to believe that a few well-placed musket blasts quickly dispersed these "pusillanimous" people (Banks again), leaving their weapons to the white invaders? And could they have heard a ghostly voice quavering an old lament from a billabong somewhere out in the sand dunes? You know the one: Charlie Drake's My Boomerang Won't Come Back.

In addition to a few crumbs from Cook's voyage, the London sale also offers a wealth of works by another doughty explorer - Ellis Rowan, who even in her late 60s was bravinong visits to New Guinea to paint its fascinating flora and fauna. These watercolours mostly show meticulous images of brilliant butterflies and moths - as many as several hundred per drawing - with estimates from #1000 and up. They were apparently exhibited at the once very upmarket Anthony Hordern department store in 1920 (the site is now the World Square development in Sydney's Goulburn Street).

pfish@smh.com.au

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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