Job done selling luxe apartments, Lendlease offloads vast landscape
Elizabeth Fortescue, 13 November 2024
Anyone with designs on living in the residential towers at One Sydney Harbour in Barangaroo must vividly remember visiting the display suite.
Located in the nearby International Tower One while Lendlease was still building the residential towers, the suite featured a painting of classic rural Australia on a canvas the size of a big boardroom table.
Hillside I, 2004-2011, measuring 162 cm by 380 cm, is by Melbourne-born artist William Delafield Cook, who died in 2015.
At $450,000 to $650,000, Hillside I is now for sale by Lendlease, which bought the picture through Olsen Irwin Gallery in 2016 and is now parting with the work because the residential towers are over 90 per cent sold out and the display suite is no longer required.
Hillside I carries the highest pre-sale estimate of all 52 lots in Deutscher + Hackett’s end-of-year auction of Important Australian and International Fine Art, which will take place in Melbourne on November 26.
Word has it that more than one prospective apartment buyer inquired about buying the painting, as well as one of the residences.
It’s remarkable to think that Delafield Cook painted all his quintessentially Australian landscapes in his London studio, having moved to the UK in 1958 in his early 20s.
Frequent trips back to Australia allowed the artist to recharge his visual batteries, and the experience of being in the bush never lost its freshness for him.
“It is a big hit, every time,” Delafield Cook once said.
The artist believed that removing himself from direct contact with the source of his subject matter “intensifies the experience of the place, makes it in recollection more vivid”. Judging by the immersive, enveloping experience of standing in front of Hillside I, Delafield Cook was right.
In 2022 two Delafield Cook works blew past their estimates, including the very wide A French Cliff, 1979, which set a record for the artist at auction of $515,455 including premium, also at Deutscher + Hackett. While the market isn’t as hot today, D+H – and no doubt Lendlease, who could do with a win – will be hoping the striking Hillside I can challenge that record.
Other works in the D+H sale include a large vase-like object decorated by Brett Whiteley with an exquisite bird. John K. Dellow made the ceramic itself. Bird in the Rain, 1984, has an estimate of $60,000 to $80,000.
Australian Surrealist Eric Thake’s arresting picture Brasilia at Corio, 1976, depicting a gas silo, is estimated at $30,000 to $40,000. For Hackett’s money, it’s one of the most memorable pieces in the catalogue.
John Peter Russell’s 1900 oil on canvas, Belle-Île. Village d’Envag [Sunshine Shimmer], is being sold by the Russell family and has an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000.
A tiny person is faintly pencilled onto the pathway winding through the village in Russell’s picture, and remains an intriguing little puzzle considering the work was finished and is signed.
A striking early portrait by Tony Tuckson resembles a work by the Russian expressionist artist Alexej von Jawlensky. Man’s Head No. 1 (TP 337), c.1949 carries an estimate of $18,000 to $25,000.
Howard Arkley’s 1986 canvas, Tulips and Spotted Vase, an explosion of vibrant colour, would “brighten a dark corner”, as Hackett wryly remarked while puffing on his vape. The estimate is $180,000 to $240,000.
A surprise package in the sale is Portrait of O’Donnell Moffett, c.1939, by New Zealand artist Rita Angus (estimate $200,000 to $300,000). D+H set the current Australian auction record for this artist’s work in 2022 when Hawke’s Bay Landscape, c.1955, changed hands for $843,750 including buyer’s premium of 25 per cent.
The lot illustrated on the catalogue cover is Rosalie Gascoigne‘s All That Jazz, 1989, with an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. A soft drink crate assemblage like much of Gascoigne’s work, All That Jazz features short lengths of timber arranged in a jaunty pattern.
The Melbourne-based vendor paid $400,000 for the work (including buyer’s premium) in 2006. The D+H catalogue boasts 52 lots with combined estimates ranging between $5,071,000 and $7,380,000.