This Month
Ron Walker’s mansion clearance sale ‘as good as it gets’
The auction of the former F1 boss’s Huntington home items had a low estimate of $93,000, but drew unparalleled interest and a bidding frenzy that totalled $419,250.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
Art sales top $140m but it’s a buyers’ market now
Australian art auction houses largely defied inflation, interest rates and conflict, but the pandemic-era surge has run its course.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
November
Why you need to be in the room at auctions
How would-be buyers missed their chance to purchase works at Deutscher and Hackett’s final sale of the year when they failed to hear their phones.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
Nicholas Harding’s Central Station stars on sluggish saleroom night
The painting of Eddy Avenue was the crowd favourite at Smith & Singer’s last big sale of the year, where some big names failed to sell.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
Picasso sells for $215m, despite a sagging art market
The 1932 portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter was on the auction block for four minutes as three collectors fought to gain the upper hand.
- Updated
- Zachary Small
Like ‘light fittings’: Murdoch family to sell underappreciated art
Three beguiling paintings that for generations hung in obscurity at a Murdoch family grazing property are expected to fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
Work that survived ride on roof of Mini Moke could sell for $800,000
Artist Brett Whiteley delivered his paintings personally, says the man who first sold the painting 43 years ago.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
The lawyer who quit and became a famous artist
The under-fire AGNSW’s exhibition of Vasily Kandinsky’s abstracts should put art back into conversations about the gallery.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
Antipodeans old and new carry hopes at end-of-year sales
Smith & Singer is hoping to end the year with a bang to trump Deutscher and Hackett as the top-selling auction house of the year.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
October
A 55cm X-Wing model from the original ‘Star Wars’ sells for $5m
The model, discovered in a cardboard box owned by a Hollywood visual effects artist, headlined at a sale of movie props that brought $21 million.
- Michael Levenson
A ‘Columbus letter’, the world’s first news release, sells for $6m
The 1493 pamphlet announcing Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World has a long history of being forged and stolen.
- Julia Jacobs
Former NAB director’s art collection goes under hammer
Artwork in the estate of a Melbourne business blue-blood who shrugged off a fraud scandal in the 1990s will go under the hammer in Melbourne on October 29.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
Brett Whiteley’s Yellow cracks $3m barrier
The work fetched the fourth-highest auction price for the famous artist, as a Peter Powditch painting of bikini-clad women at Maroubra made a splash.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
Art blue bloods under the hammer in ANZ revamp
The ANZ Art Collection is selling 37 works by the likes of Boyd, Drysdale and Rees to make way for contemporary artists.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
September
Whiteley’s Yellow a one-man show with $3.5m hopes
A Brett Whiteley painting bought in Sydney in 1975 and being offered for the first time since is the latest work to headline its own dedicated sale.
- Andrew Burke
Menzies’ $3m-$5m Indigenous collection to sell, but not at Menzies
The late, controversial Rod Menzies’ collection will be sold by Cooee Art, while records tumbled for several under-appreciated women artists at Leonard Joel.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
- Exclusive
- Arts
Mystery of what happened to Andrew Pridham’s $2.5m ‘Whiteley’ solved
The investment banker and Sydney Swans chairman speaks for the first time about being duped in Australia’s biggest alleged art fraud.
- Gabriella Coslovich
Sketchbook found behind a bookshelf expected to clean up
Works by Lyonel Feininger have sold for up to $36.2 million, so a book with his works discovered in a Sydney retirement village is set to attract plenty of interest.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
Someone just paid $800,000 for Freddie Mercury’s door
The first auction of the singer’s personal items raised more than $24 million for his former lover and closest friend, Mary Austin.
- Updated
- India McTaggart
The unlikely businessman who championed women artists
A Melbourne auction shines a light on a furniture salesman who used his own home as an art gallery.
- Elizabeth Fortescue
