Financial Review  |  Gabriella Coslovich

The Australian auction market has enjoyed one of its strongest-ever starts to a year. Some $41 million worth of art has been sold so far, compared with $14 million in the year-earlier period. 

The Age /Sydney Morning Herald | Kerrie O'Brien

A rarely seen painting by one of Australia’s pioneering impressionist artists, Frederick McCubbin, will go under the hammer for the first time in 140 years.

The 1884 painting The Letter is one of McCubbin’s earliest contributions to the late 19th-century art movement known as Australian Impressionism and has been long held by his family, known to exist by only a handful of scholars.

The work features McCubbin’s sister Harriet, an artist who modelled for him as well as his contemporary Tom Roberts, reading a letter, apparently deep in thought.

Measuring 45.5cm x 22.6cm, the piece will be auctioned by Smith & Singer in November with an estimated price range of $300,000-$400,000. But the auction house says there’s a chance it will sell for well above that, given the rarity of McCubbin’s work of this era and the degree of interest it is expected to generate.

The Australian  |  Stephen Lunn

It didn’t take long for Margaret Olley’s Still Life With Fruit and Flowers to find a buyer.

Art dealers Smith & Singer sent a note to those well-heeled members of its mailing list just after 10am on Thursday offering the painting for private sale. By 11.30am it had found a new home.

The buyer negotiated an undisclosed price understood to be just shy of $100,000, not a record for an Olley, but serious money.

Irish Arts Review  |  John P O'Sullivan

 In 1994, an Irishman, an Englishman and an Australian walked into the Piccadilly Gallery in Cork Street, London, and announced his arrival on the European art scene. All three of these were John Kelly, son of an Irish father and an English mother, who grew up in Melbourne - thereby allowing him access to three passports. Walking into a high-profile London gallery hawking your artistic wares rakes nerve and usually leads to a brief encounter and a chastened exit. (1.7 MB)

Financial Review  |  Gabriella Coslovich

In Australia and around the world the irreverent British graffiti artist is becoming more sought after and the prices at auction have become as much a talking point as the works themselves.

In his 2005 monograph Wall and Piece the elusive British street artist Banksy wrote ‘Despite what they say graffiti is not the lowest form of art’.  And if the measure of merit is in the price people are prepared to pay for an artist’s work (an enduringly debatable point), then Banksy has proved himself right many times over.

7 NEWS  |  Alex Turner-Cohen

The Age  |  Kerrie O'Brien

Toorak Times  |  Mick Pacholli

To celebrate 15 years of the Bowness Photography Prize MGA has partnered with Smith & Singer to showcase the 15 previous recipients during PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. 

As he prepares to unveil a ­series of works at the launch of auction house Smith & Singer’s 2021 exhibition program in Melbourne on February 15, Kelly ­reveals the story behind the show, Something Old Something New Something Borrowed Something Blue.

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.