Art works belonging to two giants of Australia’s art world – including Brett Whiteley’s (1939-1992) South Coast After the Rain, 1984 (lot 1) and Sidney Nolan’s (1917-1992) Early Morning Township, 1955 (lot 9) – will be among the massive highlights of Deutscher and Hackett’s forthcoming Melbourne auction from 7pm Wednesday August 16 at 105 Commercial Road, South Yarra.

The former painting, carrying a $1.5 million to $2 million catalogue estimate, belongs to advertising guru Peter Clemenger and his wife Joan, who died early last year.

Leading Australian landscape artist Fred Williams (1927-1982) was fascinated with a “billabong” in the Melbourne suburb of Kew and during the mid-1970s used it as the basis for his Kew Billabong series – numbering more than 30 paintings.  

Describing it as “splendid” but noting that the place was in fact “just a rubbish dump of all things”, he admitted to using a rubber tyre in his painting as a motif (first ever) and found it a great place to work.

After he retired, legendary left-arm Australian fast bowler Alan Davidson (1929-2021) used to amuse guests at Sydney Cricket Ground official lunches by using round bread rolls to demonstrate how to hold a cricket ball to bowl an inswinger.

In fact, it became such an obsession that staff started substituting the elongated variety to counteract him.

Robert Reis was such a famous and knowledgeable London-based antiques dealer and collector that one of England’s oldest and largest auction houses Christie’s was keen to employ him – and he also trained many of the commentators on the well-known TV show Antiques Roadshow.

For 45 years with partner Gay Bowler, he spent much of his time travelling throughout Europe and the United States in the pursuit of his passion before moving to Australia in 2009.