Menzies Art Brands

The usual high profile modern artists – led by John Brack’s Adagio 1967-69 (lot 41) with a $600,000-$800,000 estimate – are guaranteed to pull a large auction crowd at Menzies final sale for the year from 6.30pm Thursday December 10 at 12 Todman Avenue, Kensington in Sydney.

Possibly of greater interest is a group of seven rare works by colonial painter Thomas Tyrwhitt Balcombe (1810-1861) who was born on St Helena – home of exiled French Emperor Napoleon – before moving in 1824 with his family to Sydney, where his father had been appointed colonial treasurer.

Fred Williams was the first Australian artist to be honoured with a major exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

The year was 1977 and he already was regarded as Australia’s most important artist.

This exhibition introduced Williams to an international audience and the following year he began a series of new paintings on the Werribee Gorge – now regarded as among the most important of his career.

In the latest development of its concerted move to introduce major international art works to the Australian market, Menzies has three highly significant works by famous international artists as the centrepiece of its forthcoming Thursday June 25 auction from 6.30pm at 1 Darling Street, South Yarra.

These are American Andy Warhol’s Head After Picasso (lot 39), French expatriate Fernand Léger’s China Town (lot 40) and British sculptor Lynn Chadwick’s Maquette II Jubilee III 1984 (lot 32).

Eva Breuer’s private collection of 76 paintings is among Menzies highlights for its auction from 6.30pm Thursday March 26 at Menzies Gallery 12 Todman Avenue, Kensington in Sydney.

One of Sydney’s leading art dealers until her death from cancer in 2010, the sale of her collection follows the closure of the Eva Breuer gallery, which her daughter Nicky McWilliam continued to run after her mother died, in May 2014.

Most art followers saw Eva Breuer as a luminary of the Australian art world who was respected for her enthusiasm, energy and high standard of practice.

Leading Australian art auction house Menzies has launched itself into the charity auction market by supporting Arthritis and Osteoporosis Victoria (A&OV) in its Art for Arthritis fundraising efforts as part of the company’s final fine art sale for the year.

Several iconic Australian paintings will be on offer when the auctioneer raises his hammer for the first time at 6.30pm on Thursday December 11 at 1 Darling Street, South Yarra.

More than 230 rare leather-bound first editions from Victorian and earlier times belonging to the Parliamentary Library of NSW are part of an online timed auction by Lawsons Auctioneers, which ends at 10am on Friday November 14.

The NSW Parliamentary Library, founded in 1840 as the Library of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, is Australia’s oldest continuously operating official research library.

Menzies forthcoming Sydney auction will showcase a major Eugene von Guerard work entitled View of Hobart Town with Mount Wellington in the Background and painted in 1856.

This is 52 years after Hobart was founded and the painting, currently residing in a private Sydney collection, is a precisely detailed panoramic view of Tasmania’s State capital.

Menzies latest auction of Australian and international fine art and sculpture is not for the faint hearted – with many of the major offerings carrying six-figure estimates.

The sale, from 6.30pm Thursday July 24 at 1 Darling Street South Yarra, contains 150 lots (some with estimates as low as $2000 to cater for first time buyers) – but it is the larger works that are attracting most of the collector interest.

Norman Lindsay’s The Introduction – full of the artist’s classic nudes and suggestions – will be a major highlight of Dr Bill Cammack and his wife the late Dr Eileen Cammack’s collection to be auctioned from 1pm Saturday July 5 and Sunday July 6 by Lawsons at Menzies Gallery, 12 Todman Avenue, Kensington in Sydney.

With a catalogue estimate of $120,000-$150,000, the oil painting is an example of Norman Lindsay at his best – featuring the familiar sumptuous Ruben-esque goddesses waiting idly for their potential suitors to greet them.

The Hoong Loh collection will be part of Lawson Menzies Sydney quarterly fine art auction from 6.30pm Thursday June 19 at Menzies Gallery, 12 Todman Avenue, Kensington.

Migrating from Malaysia in 1982 to study at Monash University, Hoong was initially drawn to paintings of the Max Meldrum and George Bell schools.  

Hoong secured employment in the public service and by the late 1980s set about acquiring abstract expressionist works by Judy Cassab and John Coburn.