Submitted by aarAdmin on Wed, 03/27/2024 - 00:00
Charles Blackman’s (1928-2018) Day Dream 1958 (lot 33) brought the highest price of $270,000 (including buyer’s premium) at Menzies Melbourne auction on March 27 in a sale that just tipped over the $4.025 million mark (bp included) when 82 per cent of the works on offer changed hands.
The painting is a key element of the artist’s Faces and Flowers series, completed when Blackman was at the peak of his early recognition.
Buyer enthusiasm for such a rare auction work – which had been in the same private collection since being acquired from Brisbane’s Johnstone Gallery more than 60 years ago – readily spilled over to other artists with the ever-popular Arthur Boyd (1920-1999) sharing equal second spot in the top 10 results via Shoalhaven River with Black Cockatoo c1980 (lot 34) with Bronwyn Oliver’s (1959-2006) Acorn 2005 (lot 48) – each work bringing $233,182.
Acorn is one of just 305 works created during Oliver’s tragically short life with her unique forms rarely appearing on secondary market since most are coveted by collectors. As a result, prices for her auction works have steadily increased over the past 10 years.
Dutch artist Kees van Dongen (1877-1968) filled fourth position with Deauville, Les Tentes 1956 (lot 49) which realised $208,636.
He began his career aged 15 at the Rotterdam Academy, earning extra money as a political cartoonist and illustrator. Part of an association of well-known artists who aimed to modernise art, von Dongen was one of a select few foreign-born painters to receive the French Legion d’Honneur – becoming extremely wealthy at the same time through important commissions and public honours.
Colonial artist John Glover (1767-1849) is often sought after and his Mill on the Tiber (After Claude) c1840 (lot 39) sold for $135,000.
One of Australia’s most renowned early colonial artists, Glover was a successful watercolourist, depicting landscapes in the style of French Baroque painter Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), and became well-known for his “idealised, atmospheric landscapes with luminous skies and harmonious compositions”.
Clarice Beckett (1887-1935) continues to impress the secondary market with the prices now obtained for her paintings. Bridge over the Yarra (Punt Road Bridge) c1924 (lot 35) is another strong example of her success having sold for $122,727.
Works by Lin Onus (1948-1996), the son an Aboriginal father and Scottish mother who cleverly combined indigenous imagery, techniques and storytelling with Western practices and photorealism, never seem to disappoint and Gumiring Garkman 1994 (lot 27) changed hands for $104,318.
Anything by iconic Australian artist Brett Whiteley (1939-1992) is usually a sound investment and The Heroin Clock 2 1981 (lot 28) is no exception, selling for $101,250. Painted at the height of his heroin addiction, it is an overt representation of his substance involvement and features two clocks side by side in a clean Perspex box, the left one conventional while the right shows the numbers 3 to 8 spaced sporadically and the rest piled on top of each other while the remainder of the face is left blank.
Boyd’s picture entitled The Hunter 1945 (lot 32) and Prada IT Bag 2014 (lot 30) by another young Australian artist now living in New York, CJ Hendry, each brought $98,182.
Her works are an energetic devotion to the hyperreal tradition – the result of a close, almost tactile, engagement with a world of objects, form and colour, according to the catalogue entry.
John Kelly’s depiction entitled Man Looking into a Zebra 2000 (lot 31) has almost a comic, bizarre feel to it and the successful buyer was happy to pay $92,045 for the ownership privilege, while Hermannsburg School star Albert Namatjira’s (1902-1959) Ellery Creek Big Hole c1955 (lot 3) brought the same price in yet another good example of his ongoing popularity.
