Menzies Art Brands

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.

Menzies Art Brands was so enamoured with the results of its October auction last year (when it set a new artist auction record of almost $4 million for Brett Whiteley’s The Armchair) that it is predicting a very positive outcome for its first 2014 sale – from 6.30pm Thursday at 1 Darling Street, South Yarra.

Art specialist Tim Abdallah believes when records are set (particularly for Brett Whiteley paintings) confidence is returning to the market.

Brett Whiteley’s Platypus – perhaps the most compelling image from his Zoo publication of 1979 – will be a major highlight for Lawson-Menzies first offerings for 2014.

The auction, from 6.30pm on Thursday February 27 at 12 Todman Avenue, Kensington in Sydney, will comprise 283 works.

Prior to the sale, works will be on view in Melbourne from 10am-5.30pm Thursday February 13 to Sunday February 16 at 1 Darling Street, South Yarra.

If Rod Menzies has his way and the large and important Brett Whiteley work My Armchair 1976 – painted at a time when he won every major art award in Australia – reaches its bottom estimate of $3 million at Menzies forthcoming sale from 6.30pm on Thursday at 1 Darling Street, South Yarra, it will be a new auction record for the artist.

Such a result would eclipse the record $3.48 million (including buyers premium) paid in 2007 for Whiteley’s The Olgas for Ernest Giles at Deutscher-Menzies Sydney sale.

Auction goers who frequent Menzies art sales always expect to gaze upon some of the best paintings Australia has produced – however, this time it is French artist Fernand Leger (1881-1955) who has grabbed the limelight.

Other works in the auction should not disappoint with leading paintings by many of Australia’s leading artists of the past 100 years ready to go under the hammer from 6.30pm Thursday November 22 at 1 Darling Street, South Yarra.