IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

Consign now to our forthcoming auction of Important Australian Art.

In 2021, Smith & Singer achieved 7 of the 10 highest prices for art at auction in Australia that were combined with excellent sold rates and performances against estimates.

Building on the resounding success of our August 2022 auction of Important Australian Art, which achieved the highest total for a mixed vendor sale as well as the two highest prices at auction for the year to date, our carefully curated November 2022 auction will include significant examples of historical, modern and contemporary Australian art.

To participate in this sale, please contact our highly experienced specialists for a confidential appraisal. 
You may also use our appraisal estimate form.   

JUSTIN O'BRIEN

Smith & Singer are delighted to offer Justin O'Brien's Nude Against Landscape (1971-1972) for private sale.

For Justin O’Brien, even in a painting as personally immediate and naturalistic as Nude Against Landscape (1971-1972), there is a feeling of calm and grace.  The subject is one of several exquisite depictions of window views inspired by O’Brien’s time spent on the Greek Island of Skyros in the summer of 1971:

‘Sykros is an enchanting island … figs, pomegranates, vast vineyards, mulberry trees heavy with fruit … All this side by side with great stark mountains and Cyclonean walls.  It has a biblical aura and a sense of mystery … I have tried to catch some of the extraordinary lushness and the exotic splendor of the unforgettable view.’

A myriad of feelings are conveyed through compositions such as Nude Against Landscape.  The carefully posed nude figure leaning against the door frame acts as a mediator between the internal and external worlds – the shaded interior of the domestic villa and the sweeping landscape of the hilltop town set against the sparkling waters of the ocean below.  The setting steeped in beauty and history is both realistic and symbolic.  As O’Brien hinted, ‘the religious experience should not be confused with the spiritual experience, for the latter can be expressed through many subjects, like a vase of flowers.’

This remarkable, delicately drawn and sensitively coloured slice of light and life is not only a tour de force of naturalistic painting, but also a picture of spiritual serenity, of a man and an artist entirely content with his place in the world. 

IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

Consign now to our forthcoming auction of Important Australian Art.

In 2021, Smith & Singer achieved 7 of the 10 highest prices for art at auction in Australia that were combined with excellent sold rates and performances against estimates.

Building on the resounding success of our August 2022 auction of Important Australian Art, which achieved the highest total for a mixed vendor sale as well as the two highest prices at auction for the year to date, our carefully curated November 2022 auction will include significant examples of historical, modern and contemporary Australian art.

To participate in this sale, please contact our highly experienced specialists for a confidential appraisal. 
You may also use our appraisal estimate form. 

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 'Cubism' ring, Canturi, 2019 (estimate $75,000–95,000, pictured above).

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

SIDNEY NOLAN

Smith & Singer are delighted to offer Sidney Nolan’s Annunciation (1951) for private sale.

Sidney Nolan’s rare and remarkable images of religion hold a singular position within the artist’s oeuvre and coincided with his return to Australia from his first overseas experiences and the establishment of the Blake Prize for Religious Art.  The organisers of the Blake Prize were determined to encourage Australian artists to paint and exhibit religious subjects and thereby‘… get those paintings into our homes, and above all into our churches, to replace the cheap prints and the sentimental shams of mass-produced “sacred art” that so frequently disfigure them.’

During its formative years, the Blake Prize was one of the most prestigious art prizes in Australia, and proved extremely successful in encouraging, and in most instances initiating, many prominent contemporary artists to paint images of religion – a genre largely ignored by Australian artists.  Arthur Boyd, Donald Friend, James Gleeson, Weaver Hawkins, Elaine Haxton, Frank Hinder, Sali Herman, Sidney Nolan, Justin O’Brien, John Passmore, and Jeffrey smart all contributed significant works in the initial two prizes.

Following his European sojourn where he visited numerous cathedrals, churches, galleries and museums, Nolan found the Blake Prize an inspiration.  

Annunciation (1951) was completed on 21 December, four days before Christmas, recording the moment when the archangel Gabriel informed the virgin Mary: ‘You shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall give him the name Jesus.’  Nolan is particularly faithful to the traditional iconography, showing Mary seated, holding a book from which, according to St Bernard, she is reading the celebrated prophecy of Isaiah. Gabriel, clad in white, kneels before Mary, bearing a lily, the symbol of the Virgin’s purity.  At times the virgin was depicted within or standing at the door of a gothic building, while nearby the Romanesque structure crumbles into ruins.  Nolan locates these ruins in the Australian desert, thereby reinforcing the perception that Christ’s Incarnation heralded the New Dispensation that replaced the Old.

Nolan’s highly original religious imagery offers a dramatic synthesis of his Australian and European experiences.  As his first major series completed with the aid of a direct knowledge and understanding of European art and culture, they imposed a less familiar iconography on his more recognisable desert landscapes, and in turn increased his understanding of the Australian landscape.

ARTHUR BOYD

Smith & Singer are delighted to offer Arthur Boyd's Old Mine Shaft (1959) for private sale.

Arthur Boyd’s evocative landscape subjects of the late 1950s occupy a special place within the history and development of landscape painting in Australian art.  As the artist remarked to the author, these paintings directly referred to the naturalistic images created in the late nineteenth century by Charles Conder, Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts, and Arthur Streeton, who found inspiration in bush and bay subjects located in close proximity to their own domestic environments.

Many of Boyd’s compositions from this period focused on rugged claustrophobic bush scenes showing tangled scrub amidst a profusion of native wildflowers and grasses, as well as the more sunny and open landscapes of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.  In each of these detailed studies Boyd took particular delight in expressing the tactility and disorder of the Australian bush, whereby the application of thick pigment with both the front and back of his paint brush was further worked to create a surface rich in a variety of textures.

One of the most famous of Boyd’s images from this period is the sensuous and delightful Old Mine Shaft (1959), which within Australian art historical terms, shares parallels with Frederick McCubbin’s Lost (1886, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne).  The work elicited particular praise from Franz Philipp, who declared: ‘There are other, more open, sunny and optimistic bush landscapes; one of the finest is Old Mine Shaft.  The foreground is open, the thickly textured weave of grasses and weeds spattered with the red and white of wildflowers; the colour-flick of a child’s dress (“The lost child”) and of “bluebirds” adds further accents of brightness.’

Old Mine Shaft represents a rare opportunity to acquire a major composition from one of Australia’s most influential and beloved artists. 

IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

Consign now to our forthcoming auction of Important Australian Art.

In 2021, Smith & Singer achieved seven of the 10 highest prices for art at auction in Australia that were combined with excellent sold rates and performances against estimates.

Building on the resounding success of our August auction of Important Australian Art, which achieved the highest total for a mixed vendor sale as well as the two highest prices at auction for the year to date, our carefully curated November 2022 auction will include significant examples of historical, modern and contemporary Australian art.

Smith & Singer's November auction is now open for consignments.  A number of exceptional works are already consigned, including 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. 

To participate in this sale, please contact our highly experienced specialists for a confidential appraisal.  
You may also use our appraisal estimate form. 

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 sold, including this spectacular square emerald-cut diamond ring (estimate $120,000–140,000, sold for $147,273, pictured above).

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

Financial Review  |  Gabriella Coslovich

The magical panoramas of Venice and the brushwork of Australia’s most famed impressionist, Arthur Streeton, are a combination guaranteed to spark bidding rallies at auction. 

IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

Smith & Singer are honoured to announce that at Wednesday night’s auction of Important Australian Art a new world auction record was achieved for John Kelly.

For the past three decades, John Kelly has developed a distinguished reputation in Australia and internationally for his work which combines his unique intellect and humour.

Consigned from a private collection in Brisbane, John Kelly’s magnificent and monumental Man Lifting Cow (1) 1994 generated enormous interest during viewings in Melbourne and Sydney that transferred into deep and frenetic bidding on the evening.

John Kelly is represented exclusively by Smith & Singer.