The Sydney Morning Herald | James Cockington
Competition for the Australian fine art dollar is as intense, in its own refined way, as a Geelong v Hawthorn grudge match.
Towards the end of last month the battle of the Jeffrey Smarts took place between two of Australia's biggest auction houses.
The Age | Luc Wiesman
Syndicated: The Brisbane Times, The Canberra Times, The Sydney Morning Herald & WA Today
This story was originally published on D'Marge
While lunching with a clever friend, he let me in on a few secrets about buying watches at auction. We're not talking about eBay here, but at the likes of established auction houses.
Australian Financial Review | Peter Fish
With a host of new artist records set and a sold ratio of a relatively healthy 75 per cent by volume, Sotheby’s sale of Australian and international art on Tuesday rates as a significant success.
The Australian | Michaela Boland
ART buyers proved bullish at Sotheby’s Australia’s winter auction in Sydney last night where six artist auction records fell and 75 per cent of 95 offered lots sold for $6.26 million, the best result since May last year.
The Advertiser | Louise Nunn
A PAINTING of a shipping container parked next to a warehouse by SA artist Jeffrey Smart achieved the highest result of $878,400 at a major art auction.
Australian Arts Sales Digest | Terry Ingram
A work considered as Australia's answer to Monet's water lilies struggled at the sale by Sotheby's Australia of Important Australian and International Art in Sydney on August 26. But a painting of a warehouse and trucking park attracted intense competition and made a hammer price in the region of $¾ million, the highest price lot in the sale.
D'Marge | Luc Wiesman
While Friday lunching with a clever friend he let me in on a little secret about buying watches and engagement rings at auction. In this instance we’re not talking about eBay, but at the likes of established auction houses where sellers are not called promisenotfakewatch123.
The Age, The Canberra Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, WA Today | James Cockington
Jeffrey Smart was born in Adelaide in 1921 and first exhibited his paintings there in 1941. He was obviously destined for fame. When Smart was born his father, a local property developer, named a street in a new estate in Hawthorn after him.
2GB 873AM | Ross Greenwood
Ross Greenwood speaks to the Chairman of Sotheby’s Australia Geoffrey Smith about a major art auction taking place next week. (Audio)
Adelaide artist Dorrit Black (1891-1951) is one of Australia’s most respected artists credited for introducing modernist principles and techniques to local audiences. In the late 1920s during her time studying at the Grosvenor School of Art in London and Mirmande in the south of France, Black developed a distinct post-impressionist and cubist style.
The Pink House (1928) (estimate $40,000-60,000, lot 25) and A Dorset Farmyard (1944) (estimate $30,000-40,000, lot 26) are two particularly rare examples of her exceptional work as a modernist painter. The use of tonal modelling is evident in The Pink House, a device Black successfully adopted during her time working and studying abroad. The foreground of the painting shows the green foliage of trees, while the flat apricot walls and red rooftop prisms show Black’s supreme skills as a modernist painter.
A Dorset Farmyard, was painted by Black in Adelaide from sketches she had made ten years earlier at Chideock, a small west Devon coastal farming village. The artist visited the village in 1935 with a group of artists on her second visit to England and later revisited the sketches while working in Adelaide. The oil painting shows a herd of cattle against the soft organic curves of the farm rooves in the background.
These important paintings by Dorrit Black are offered for auction for the first time at Sotheby’s Australia’s Important Australian & International Art sale on 26 August 2014 in Sydney. The paintings have been consigned from the collection of fellow South Australian artist Jacqueline Hick (1919-2004) and represent a unique opportunity for collectors of Australian art.
Much of the artist’s work was influenced by her studies in Europe, but as a founding director of the Modern Art Centre in Sydney, Black’s contribution to Australian modern art is undisputed. Black taught landscape painting at the South Australian School of Arts, where one of her pupils was Jacqueline Hick. Well known for her figurative paintings, Hick was passionate about the arts and served on the board of the Art Gallery of South Australia for seven years and the Council of the Australian National Gallery in Canberra between 1982 and 1985.
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View catalogue entry The Pink House (1928)
view catalogue entry A Dorset Farmyard (1944)
Dorrit Black 1891-1951
A Dorset Farmyard (1944)
oil on canvas board
42.2 x 58.7 cm
Estimate $30,000-40,000
Pictured top:Dorrit Black 1891-1951
The Pink House (1928)
oil on canvas on cardboard
36.8 x 47.6 cm
Estimate $40,000-60,000