News & Video

The Sydney Morning Herald  |  Geoffrey Smith and Gary Singer

The Australian  |  Imogen Reid

A 1960 painting by one of Australia’s most treasured artists is estimated to sell for up to $650,000 in a coveted auction where some of the nation’s rarest artworks will be placed under the hammer.  Bids for John Olsen’s People Who Live in Victoria Street, a painting of “decorative chaos” featured in Smith & Singer’s Important Australian & International Art exhibition, are expected to start at $450,000.  Spanning more than a century, the pieces will form an event comprising examples of the nation’s most renowned collections. Open for viewings in Sydney on Wednesday, it will be a precursor to the auction in the city’s eastern suburbs on Nov­ember 18.

Le Courrier Australien  |  Yves Hernot

Exposition du 11 au 18 novembre 2020, de 10h à 17h au 30 Queen Street, Woollahra (Sydney), NSW

Vente aux enchères le 18 novembre 2020 à 18h30 au National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, 111 Queen Street, Woollahra (Sydney), NSW.  La vente aux enchères aura lieu à Sydney le 18 novembre 2020 au Conseil national des Femmes Juives d’Australie,  au 111 Queen Street, Woollahra  à 18h30.  Parmi les points forts de cette vente, citons l’extraordinaire A Southern View, Olinda (1933) d’Arthur Streeton, lot 14, estimation 300 000–500 000 $,  voir photo et Lysterfield Landscape de Fred Williams (1968) lot 8, estimation 450 000–650 000 $ .

Financial Review  |  Gabriella Coslovich

Collectors will be spoilt for choice this month as a succession of headline-grabbing artworks go under the hammer as the auction year winds up [...] Smith & Singer has consigned a few gems of its own [...] Rupert Bunny’s haughtily elegant portrait of his companion and muse, the French artist Jeanne-Heloise Morel, could set a new record for the artist. Estimated at $800,000 to $1.2 million, the sumptuous Portrait of Mlle Morel, from 1895, is the star work in Smith & Singer’s 74-lot final auction of the year.

ARTFIXdaily  |  Anon.

In 1892, Rupert Bunny fell in love with an art student, Jeanne Heloise Morel, forever changing the young artist's life and work. A canvas at auction this month is the first, major full-length portrait by Bunny of Morel, painted tenderly by her fiancé and revealed to the public at the epicentre of art at the time – the Salon, Paris, 1895.  John Longstaff, one of Bunny’s closest friends and fellow Australian artist living and working in Paris recalled: ‘I remember … the very night they met, and how he fell in love with her at first sight.  She was a regular Dresden china girl with a deliciously tip-titled nose.’  Smith & Singer will present this landmark work for sale this November 18. Of remarkable personal significance to the artist and bearing distinguished provenance from some of Australia’s most renowned collectors, Portrait of Mlle Morel (1895) represents one of the most important paintings – by one of Australia’s most celebrated artists – remaining in private ownership.