IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

The exhibition will be on view in Sydney from Monday 14 November until Wednesday 16 November, 10 am to 5 pm, at 30 Queen Street, Woollahra.

This sale presents a collection of extraordinary moments in Australian art history.  Surveying major stylistic developments, this auction offers rare and prestigious examples of Naturalism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Modernism, and Abstraction, along with ground-breaking paintings, sculptures and works on paper by the most influential artistic innovators of historical, modern and contemporary Australian Art.

Among the highlights of the sale are Charles Blackman’s seminal Girl Talk (1960), Joel Elenberg’s expressive Woman I (1975) and Albert Tucker’s compelling Armoured Explorer 1996 that fuses the profile of the Antipodean head with the Ned Kelly armour to create an image of extraordinary power and gravitas.

The auction will be held at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, 111 Queen Street, Woollahra at 6.30 pm on 16 November 2022.

IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

The exhibition will be on view in Sydney from Friday 11 November until Wednesday 16 November, 10 am to 5 pm, at 30 Queen Street, Woollahra.

This sale presents a collection of extraordinary moments in Australian art history.  Surveying major stylistic developments, this auction offers rare and prestigious examples of Naturalism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Modernism, and Abstraction, along with ground-breaking paintings, sculptures and works on paper by the most influential artistic innovators of historical, modern and contemporary Australian Art.

Among the highlights of the sale are Arthur Boyd's evocative The Old Farm (1958) (lot 13, estimate $150,000-250,000, pictured above left) and spectacular recently repatriated Bride and Bridegroom by a Stream (1960) (lot 11, estimate †$350,000-550,000, pictured above right), as well as Joel Elenberg's magnificent Head VI (1976) (lot 6, estimate $60,000-80,000, pictured above centre) all representing rare and important compositions within the history and development of Modern Australian Art.

The auction will be held at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, 111 Queen Street, Woollahra at 6.30 pm on 16 November 2022.

IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

The exhibition will be on view in Sydney from Wednesday 9 November until Wednesday 16 November, 10 am to 5 pm, at 30 Queen Street, Woollahra.

This sale presents a collection of extraordinary moments in Australian art history.  Surveying major stylistic developments, this auction offers rare and prestigious examples of Naturalism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Modernism, and Abstraction, along with ground-breaking paintings, sculptures and works on paper by the most influential artistic innovators of historical, modern and contemporary Australian Art.

Among the highlights of the sale are exceptional examples of Australian Impressionism, including Rupert Bunny’s delightful On the Cliff (1910) and Arthur Streeton’s magnificent Romance in Blue and Gold (1932).

The auction will be held at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, 111 Queen Street, Woollahra at 6.30 pm on 16 November 2022.

IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

The exhibition will be on view in Melbourne from Wednesday 2 November until Sunday 6 November, 10 am to 5 pm, at 14-16 Collins Street.

Among the highlights of the sale is Lin Onus' magnificent and confronting Ten Little Niggers (1992) (estimate $400,000–600,000, pictured above), an image that powerfully blends Indigenous and Western references with startling originality.

The figure of a nude woman lying on an inflatable Li-lo floating on a leafy billabong is one of only three major paintings of the female nude by Lin Onus, and is the earliest of these.  Ten Little Niggers (1992) with its confrontational title was painted two years before the ambiguously titled The Joy of Fishing – In Waiting (1994, Private Collection) followed by the portrait-like Robyn (1995, Private Collection).  In this remarkable composition Lin Onus has faithfully rendered in detail the cover of Christie’s world-wide best-seller to crystallise the allusions within his painting as a metaphor for the historic racist stereotyping that has insidiously permeated Western culture.

Following Melbourne, the Sydney exhibition will take place from 10-16 November, 10 am to 5 pm at 30 Queen Street, Woollahra.

The auction will be held at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, 111 Queen Street, Woollahra at 6.30 pm on 16 November 2022.

IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

The exhibition will be on view in Melbourne from Wednesday 2 November until Sunday 6 November, 10 am to 5 pm, at 14-16 Collins Street.

Among the highlights of the sale is Arthur Boyd’s exceptional Bride and Bridegroom by a Stream (1960) from the artist’s most acclaimed and revered ‘Bride’ series.  Until recently the composition remained unknown to art historians and has been repatriated to Australia from the collection of the distinguished publisher Frederick Praeger, Colorado.  The subject represents one of the most romantic, tender and ethereal in the series.  Here the bride and bridegroom are coupled in the Australian bush, their faces and bodies almost merging into one, as the bride’s diaphanous gown shimmers and glistens as it catches the last rays of light.  Caught somewhere between myth and imagination, dreamtime and real-time, the whole seduction-rejection story is played out against a landscape background of undulating and thinly wooded hills that owe something to Boyd’s slightly earlier Berwick and Murrumbeena compositions.

Bride and Bridegroom by a Stream represents an exciting and important rediscovery from Arthur Boyd’s most critically acclaimed series within the history and development of Australian art.

Following Melbourne, the Sydney exhibition will take place from 10-16 November, 10 am to 5 pm at 30 Queen Street, Woollahra.

The auction will be held at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, 111 Queen Street, Woollahra at 6.30 pm on 16 November 2022.

The digital catalogue for the upcoming Important Australian Art auction at Smith & Singer is now available to view online.

Among the highlights of the sale is Arthur Streeton’s magnificent Romance in Blue and Gold (1932) (lot 32, estimate $300,000-500,000, pictured above).  

It is not difficult to understand why Arthur Streeton is one of the most highly regarded, appreciated and beloved of all Australian artists, and that his images of the ocean, in particular, have captured our hearts and minds.

In early 1932 Streeton visited Port Campbell and completed six major canvasses that responded to one of the most dramatic sections of Victoria’s entire coastline.  In such compositions created between the First and Second World Wars, Streeton expressed his concerns and ideals to present an Australian landscape that remained genuine, pure and clear; a landscape the reflected stability, resilience and fortitude; recaptured something uniquely Australian that had been feared as potentially lost; and looked to the future with promise and hope.  Romance in Blue and Gold has long been regarded as one of the artist’s finest and evocative subjects from this crucial period.

The exhibition will take place in Melbourne from Wednesday 2 November – Sunday 6 November, 10 am to 5 pm at 14-16 Collins Street, and in Sydney from Thursday 10 November – Wednesday 16 November, 10 am to 5 pm at 30 Queen Street, Woollahra.

The auction will be held at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, 111 Queen Street, Woollahra at 6.30 pm on 16 November 2022.

IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

The digital catalogue for the upcoming Important Australian Art auction at Smith & Singer is now available to view online.

Among the highlights of the sale is Brett Whiteley’s magnificent Vision of Bali 1976-1978 (lot 12, estimate $800,000-1,200,000, pictured above).  

Brett Whiteley is widely and appropriately celebrated as one of Australia’s great cultural identities: both a charismatic artist pop star and a phenomenally gifted draughtsman and painter.  Versatile and expansive, his oeuvre encompasses a wide range of media and subjects – in 1978, the year in which Vision of Bali was completed, Whiteley became the first and only artist ever to win all three of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ prestigious painting prizes; the Archibald (portraiture), the Wynne (landscape) and the Sulman (subject/genre).

Vision of Bali pulsates with an exuberance and radiance that, like Van Gogh, presents a landscape that seems alive, vital and quivering.  Onto the beautifully primed and painted surface the artist articulates the outlines of the shapes of an exotic scene that is both physical and metaphysical, real and imagined.  Saturated and bathed in a golden light, the canvas catapults the viewer to a heightened state of reality.  It is a subject known and experienced by Whiteley.  It is Whiteley making Van Gogh his own.

The exhibition will take place in Melbourne from Wednesday 2 November – Sunday 6 November, 10 am to 5 pm at 14-16 Collins Street, and in Sydney from Thursday 10 November – Wednesday 16 November, 10 am to 5 pm at 30 Queen Street, Woollahra.

The auction will be held at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, 111 Queen Street, Woollahra at 6.30 pm on 16 November 2022.

IMPORTANT JEWELS, WATCHES & MEDALS

Consign now to our next auction of Important Jewels, Watches & Medals that will take place in Sydney in December 2022.

This auction will build on the resounding success of our August Important Jewels & Watches sale, which realised a total of $1,343,127, our highest since 2019, and demonstrated that demand remains strong for diamonds, coloured gemstones and jewels and watches by the world’s leading jewellery brands and watchmakers.  A number of important pieces have already been consigned, including this spectacular diamond and gem-set 'Allegra' necklace, Bulgari, circa 2010 (estimate $40,000–50,000, pictured above).

Smith & Singer offer unique and unparalleled access to local and international collectors.  Contact our specialists now for a confidential appraisal.

ARTHUR BOYD

Smith & Singer are delighted to offer Arthur Boyd's Fishing at Dusk on the Shoalhaven (circa 1983) for private sale.

Arthur Boyd’s preoccupation with the landscape of the Shoalhaven area, near Nowra in New South Wales, commenced in the summer of 1971, when he returned to Australia after living more than a decade in the United Kingdom.  For the next almost thirty years Boyd intermittently recorded the Shoalhaven River, Riversdale Hill and surroundings at various times of the day throughout the changing seasons.

During the early 1980s Boyd’s Shoalhaven landscapes became more ambitious, monumental and tactile as the artist began applying paint with his fingers as well as a brush.  Film footage showing the artist creating these paintings reveals both a primal response to the physical act of painting and an innate empathy and reverence to land and place.  Born from his obsession with and exploration of a particular landscape, these paintings of the river and the bush-covered escarpment behind have entered the Australian psyche, becoming some of the most recognisable images of the Australian landscape.

Impressive for its serene beauty and refined application of pigment, Fishing at Dusk on the Shoalhaven is a deceptively simple transcription of the view, without the mythological or allegorical subject matter introduced into many of the Shoalhaven pictures.  The work incorporates a number of the most familiar elements of the local iconography: the densely forested riverbanks with fallen tree-trunks, scattered boulders wedged into the hillside, and the smooth surface of the peaceful water, broken only by the mirrored reflections.  The landscape is ablaze with the vibrant opalescent colours of an Australian summer’s day as a lone fisherman quietly attends to his task.  It is a joyful, profound and splendid hymn to a much-loved landscape.

Fishing at Dusk on the Shoalhaven has long been regarded as amongst the very finest of the series and represents a special opportunity to acquire a major composition from one of Australia’s most influential and beloved artists. 

Pictured above 

ARTHUR BOYD 1920-1999 
Fishing at Dusk on the Shoalhaven (circa 1983) 
oil on canvas
120 x 100 cm 
For private sale  
© Arthur Boyd/Copyright Agency, 2022

IMPORTANT JEWELS, WATCHES & MEDALS

Consign now to our next auction of Important Jewels, Watches & Medals that will take place in Sydney in December 2022.

This auction will build on the resounding success of our August Important Jewels & Watches sale, which realised a total of $1,343,127, our highest since 2019, and demonstrated that demand remains strong for diamonds, coloured gemstones and jewels and watches by the world’s leading jewellery brands and watchmakers.  A number of important pieces have already been consigned, including this spectacular opal, South Sea pearl and diamond necklace, Paspaley, 2005 (estimate $48,000–58,000, pictured above).

Smith & Singer offer unique and unparalleled access to local and international collectors.  Contact our specialists now for a confidential appraisal.