Melbourne-based Gibson’s Auctions is giving art lovers and those looking to enter the market for the first time the opportunity to pick up works by significant Australian artists at its timed Winter Art Online auction to be held from 10am Monday June 20 at 885-889 High Street, Armadale.

The paintings and editions, all with estimates in the several hundreds of dollars range, feature such luminaries as Sidney Nolan (1917-1992), Clarice Beckett (1887-1935), Anne Hall, Pro Hart (1928-2006) and Louis Kahan (1905-2002).

Auctioneer Hannah Clayton Atkin couldn’t believe her eyes when she spotted a first edition copy of famous 19^th century English author Charles Dickens’ novel ‘Hard Times’ among a box of old items from a deceased estate. 

Part of the library collection of noted bibliophile Frederick Perkins (1780-1860) who lived at the now demolished Chipstead Place in Kent, the book was published in 1854 by Bradbury and Evans in London. 

If acclaimed songwriter Archie Roach and his partner Ruby Hunter had never decided on a pioneering tour of indigenous communities on Australia’s Cape York peninsula, Julie Hickson might not have collected historically important, seminal art works from the Lockhart River Art Gang.

As luck would have it, in 1997 the two set out to visit these communities accompanied by a band and camera crew, with Julie as their manager in charge of arrangements.

A wealthy 19^th century Scottish industrialist and Britain’s wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill’s butler are forever inexorably linked through a recently sold heritage listed National Trust Mount Macedon home whose contents will be auctioned online from 11am Sunday May 22 by auctioneer Phil Caldwell. 

William McGregor migrated to Australia and built the Gothic-style Victorian home at 49-51 Devonshire Lane in 1874, naming it Ard Rudah (High Promontory) as a reminder of his Highland roots.