Living artists set records at $13m D&H sale
19 November 2020, Australian Financial Review, Gabriella Coslovich
The packed November auction season was off to a flying start last week with Deutscher and Hackett posting its highest auction total for the year and the highest value Melbourne sale in a decade. The 63-lot auction last Wednesday night, featuring twenty classics of Australian art, pulled in $13 million (including buyer’s premium), bringing Deutscher and Hackett’s auction total for the year to $25.8 million, edging the company to the lead as its rivals also headed to the rostrum this week with their final major auctions of the year – Smith & Singer Wednesday night and Menzies Thursday night.
Deutscher and Hackett’s strong result made up for the relatively sluggish bidding on the sale’s prize lot, Russell Drysdale’s Going to the Pictures, 1941, which it had hoped would set a record for the artist. Bidding for the painting stalled at $2.4 million (hammer), making it a tie with Grandma’s Sunday Walk, which sold for the same amount at a Mossgreen auction in Adelaide in 2017. Going to the Pictures is a significantly smaller painting, however, and by anyone’s measure, $2.4 million for work of just 46cm by 55cm, is a respectable result.
The painting is also the auction year’s most expensive so far – and the third $2 million-plus artwork sold by Deutscher and Hackett in 2020 – although it will likely be surpassed by the $5 to $7 million Brett Whiteley painting, Henri’s Armchair, being auctioned by Menzies next Thursday.
Ben Quilty's Paul's Falcon, 2008, set a new record for the artist, selling for $140,000 (hammer) at Deutscher and Hackett last week.
“We are moderately happy and the vendor is moderately happy,” Deutscher and Hackett’s Melbourne executive director Chris Deutscher said. “We all had higher expectations, but imagine how disappointed we would have been if it didn’t sell. Mission accomplished.”
As Saleroom readers will recall, the painting had not been on the market since 1942 when it was bought by the prominent art critic and journalist, the late Clive Turnbull, at Drysdale’s landmark exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney.
In a boon for contemporary art, the auction set three records for living Australian artists, including for Sydney’s Ben Quilty whose thickly-painted, masculine works are unfailingly popular, particularly his car paintings. Quilty’s menacingly large canvas of a classic 1970s muscle car, Paul’s Falcon, 2008, sold for $140,000 (hammer), $60,000 more than the previous record for a Quilty which was sealed at a Deutscher and Hackett sale in 2005, for the painting One Big One, of a Toyota Landcruiser.
One of the 14 photographs in Indigenous artist Michael Cook's suite of images, Civilised, 2012, which set a new record for the artist selling for $88,000 (hammer) at Deutscher and Hackett last week.
The work of Brisbane-born Indigenous artist and photographer Michael Cook couldn’t be more different in style and content. Cook’s ethereal, quietly pointed and much-exhibited suite of photographs, Civilised, 2012, sold for $88,000 (hammer), setting a record for the artist’s work, which rarely comes to auction.
Deutscher was personally chuffed to see 90-year-old abstract artist Yvonne Audette set a record with Cantata No. 14, 1963-64, which sold for $240,000 (hammer), almost three times the artist’s previous record of $85,000 for Cantata No. 16, 1958, achieved at Sotheby’s Australia (now trading as Smith and Singer) in Sydney in 2018
Audette was acknowledged in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours List as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to the visual arts as an abstract painter.
“You don’t have many artists getting an honour for something so specific,” Deutscher says, “and now she’s finally being recognised with a major picture.”
A bidding rally saw Ian Fairweather’s Lads Boxing, 1939, rise to $520,000 (hammer), more than double its high estimate. British artist Keith Vaughan’s Baptism, 1963, was hotly contested by eight bidders on the phone from London – and sold to a London buyer for $180,000 (hammer), $20,000 more than the high estimate.
Just three of the 63 lots were passed in, and two of them sold after the auction – Peter Upward’s January Seventh, 1961, and Rosalie Gascoigne’s Gold Rush, 1996.
Only Rover Thomas’s 1990 painting Lissadell Station remains unsold. The work’s provenance is solid, but the image lacks the punch of Rover’s best paintings.
Yet again, luck was on Deutscher and Hackett’s side when it came to the restrictions in place because of the pandemic. Melbourne’s extended lockdown ended on 27 October, clearing the way for potential local buyers to visit the company’s South Yarra gallery and view the artworks.
“The planets were aligned with this auction because when we went to print with the catalogue we weren’t sure there would be a Melbourne viewing,” Deutscher says. “We printed, viewing by appointment only, and then there was no need for appointment. We had a normal Melbourne viewing and the big difference this year was that everyone walked in with a big smile on their face. People were sincerely happy to be looking at art again,” Deutscher says.
He speculates that several factors influenced the strong sales: Joe Biden winning the United States election, the stock market taking off in response, the “captive audience” of Australian collectors still unable to travel overseas, and high-quality artworks fresh to the market. The company has one more auction before the year ends, of contemporary Indigenous photography, to be sold online in a fortnight. But already, Deutscher and Hackett’s turnover in this difficult year surpasses last year’s takings of $21.34 million, and is its highest total since 2017’s turnover of $37 million.
“We were prepared to take quite a hit on our turnover this year, and it didn’t happen,” Deutscher says. “It’s been an absolute rollercoaster year and we have come out on top.”