Submitted by aarAdmin on Wed, 08/20/2014 - 00:00
Virtual real estate appears to be performing as well as the real thing, with an enormous Howard Arkley painting setting a new auction record for the artist during lively bidding at Bonhams August auction, which reaped total sales of $2.2 million.
A Large House with Fence, 1998, painted the year before Arkley died, wassold to a private collector for $463,600, surpassing the previous artist record, set in 2007, of $401,442 for Family Home, 1988.
More than three metres wide and two metres tall, the painting depicts a vividly coloured suburban house and is one of several Arkley works inspired by real-life property advertisements.
Bonhams chairman Mark Fraser said the painting was easily the best work by the artist to come onto the market in the past decade.
“Howard Arkley’s paintings have become important, iconic symbols of urban Australian identity and works of this quality and size don’t appear at auction very often,” he said.
Adding to its cache, Mr Fraser said, was the fact that the painting is considered the companion piece to Superb + Solid, another huge work painted the year before Arkley’s untimely death which is in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
