Art Market Monitor

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Australian Painter Brett Whiteley Makes $3.9m Record

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Record breaking Whiteley painting

A new record price was set for Australia’s Brett Whiteley yesterday when his 1976 painting, My Armchair, was sold by the couple that bought it out of his studio for $10,000. T

My Armchair was snapped up by Melbourne art dealer John Playfoot at an auction at Menzies in South Yarra. It sold to a Melbourne-based “private collector” for $3,927,272, including buyer’s premium. The previous record for a Whiteley painting sold at auction was $3.48 million for his 1985 painting The Olgas for Ernest Giles

Brett Whiteley masterpiece sells for record $3.9m at Melbourne auction (Herald Sun)

Sotheby’s Australia Comes Up Short with 42% Sell-Through

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Jeffrey Smart, The Hitch-Hiker (A$300-400k) A$366k

Sotheby’s Australia held a conservative sale last night but even pulling in their horns didn’t help. The Jeffrey Smith work above was the top seller at A$366k and one of the few works to sell within the estimate range:

A catalogue of 48 artworks with a combined pre-auction estimate of $5 million-$6.7m went under the hammer but only 42 per cent found buyers. The sale total of $1.97m included the 22 per cent buyer’s premium.

The auction at Sotheby’s Woollahra office in Sydney’s eastern suburbs attracted fewer than 60 people and most sat on their hands, leaving bidding to just a handful of game souls in the room and on phones.

Poor Sale at Sotheby’s Reflect Market Doldrums (The Australian)

Australian Collectors Look Outward

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The Sydney Morning Herald notes the strong presence of Australian collectors at ArtHK in Hong Kong and the growing number of galleries in Sydney selling international art. This is a sea change for the Australian market, the paper says:

the gradual infiltration of Sydney galleries by overseas work has been under way for a long time. Annandale Galleries has been one of the leaders of this trend, holding successful shows by artists such as William Kentridge, Leon Kossoff and John Virtue. Roslyn Oxley has hosted exhibitions by Yayoi Kusama and Wim Delvoye; Rex Irwin was showing artists such as Lucian Freud before they became art-market superstars. Ray Hughes was the first to acquire a taste for contemporary Chinese and even African art.

Last year, Andrew Jensen opened a gallery that took the commitment to overseas work a step further, with a stable that includes challenging abstract artists and minimalists from Europe and the US. Now we have the New Albion Gallery, a venture by auctioneers Deutscher Hackett, dedicated to showing well-known international artists who have never been exposed to the Australian market.

Foreign Affairs (Sydney Morning Herald)

Australian Banker Doubts His Whiteley’s Authenticity

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The Australian art market is still dogged by the case of dealer Peter Gant who was accused of trafficking in fakes. Now comes the story of a disgruntled client who believes his Whiteley—bought for $2.5m after Whiteley’s prices had reached a new peak in 2007—was purchased from Gant and may not be what it pretends to be:

In November 2007, the banker turned to the well-known auctioneer and Melbourne art adviser Anita Archer to help him buy some serious art. In return for a commission, Archer was to identify works that would make a good investment. Archer soon told Pridham she could get him a large painting referred to as Lavender Bay, 1988, signed and dated ”Brett Whiteley 1988”. […]

Now Pridham is suing Archer for selling him an “artwork that was not by the artist Brett Whiteley”, and for allegedly failing to exercise all the “reasonable care, diligence and skill” required to verify and advise him on the painting’s provenance, according to his statement of claim to the NSW Supreme Court. Pridham wants his $2.5 million back, plus money to cover the loss of the capital appreciation of the work, and what he spent insuring the painting and getting experts to check its authenticity. […]

As Pridham tells the story, Archer told him the painting’s provenance was “impeccable”, that she had been trying for some time to buy it from the Village Roadshow director Robert Le Tet who had bought it direct from Whiteley in 1988 and had it hanging in his North Sydney office. Archer denies all this.

Pridham alleges Archer told him she had spoken to the original framer, Brett Liechtenstein, known for many years of collaboration with Whiteley, “who asserted that he could clearly remember framing the picture in 1988”. But Pridham goes on to say Liechtenstein refused to verify its provenance because he had not been shown the painting.

Big Blue Sparked by Doubt Over Whiteley Painting (Sydney Morning Herald)

Australia’s Shapiro Gets Herman Sale

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Australia’s art market has been in a long contraction but the Sydney Morning Herald thinks there are signs of life in the upcoming September sales, including the Sept. 15th auction at Shapiro’s:

Shapiro’s drawcard is a Sali Herman collection that has never been on the market or exhibited before.

The managing director of Shapiro, Andrew Shapiro, started pursuing the Herman collection last October against competition from other auction houses. He secured it in May. The 17 paintings and three drawings, including some of the painter’s well-known inner-city street scenes, come from the estate of Andrew Curtis, a Holocaust survivor who did well in Australia and befriended Herman, who was also a Jewish refugee.

”It was very sought after because it is a full retrospective of his work from early to late career and some of his best work is in it,” Shapiro says.

”Are people spending? I’m not, but the luxury market is doing OK and someone always has money. In this market, what people want and what performs is a collection. Buyers want material that has not been on the market for 40 years so this is a real sale.”

At a Mossgreen auction held in June last year, Herman’s Argyle Place secured a record $137,425 for the artist’s work, including buyer’s premium. Shapiro’s cover painting is Terraces, Millers Point, a 1975 oil on canvas estimated to sell for between $30,000 and $50,000. Shapiro was excited to discover that the collection included the work Richmond Bridge, Tasmania ($20,000 to $30,000) and another Herman painting of which he had never heard, The artist’s studio with cat (self-portrait), ($30,000 to $50,000).

Auction Houses Paint a Rosy Picture (Sydney Morning Herald)

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