Saleroom: Strong following for Weeks

John Weeks' modernist oil Band and Dancers fetched $10,400 at auction.

Some artists are hard to attach labels to. At times they seem part of one particular school, at others representative of something quite different.

What matters is the quality of the art, and the buyers who turned out in big numbers at Webb's on Sunday clearly see John Weeks as an artist of considerable distinction, as well as variety.

On offer were more than 150 works from the artist's personal collection, left to his friend and partner Hilda O'Connor when he died in 1965.

The collection ended up with her son Peter, who died last year. On his instructions, it was to be sold and the proceeds given to an education foundation providing scholarships for disadvantaged children in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

Weeks, born in England in 1888 and brought to New Zealand at 4 by his farmer parents, taught at Elam for 23 years. He was constantly exploring styles and techniques.

He bore the burden of having a 1935 work, Waitakere Ranges, described by A.R.D. Fairburn as "the starting-point for a school of New Zealand painting".

That was not a suggestion the unassuming Weeks would have been happy with, but many of the works offered on Sunday suggest otherwise.

It is a measure of their appeal, whether classical nudes and portraits, near-cubist landscapes or still lifes, modernist abstracts, or watercolours and sketches of scenes in Morocco which could have spilled over into tourist sentimentality but didn't through the sheer quality of colour and draughtsmanship, that everything sold - a rarity at any auction.

And well over half the works went for more than the higher estimate, with spirited, competitive bidding throughout. Not that the prices were astronomical - the highest was $10,400 for Band and Dancers, a modernist oil. Webb's had estimated that at from $8000 to $12,000, but it didn't attract attention as much as the smaller Bathers, which went for $8000 against expectations of $2000 to $3000.

One seasoned buyer suggested the sale was a procession of bargains. It will be interesting to see how the market reacts if some of these hitherto largely unknown works come up for sale again soon.

In other news, Webb's A2 arts sale last week saw reasonable but not spectacular prices, with the highest $4700 (add 14.06 per cent for buyer's premium and GST) for a Gordon Walters' screenprint Kur.

A number of artist records were set at the International Art Centre's interesting and varied sale last month, including Vera Cummings ($8000 for a Maori portrait), Douglas Badcock ($8200 for a North Otago mountain landscape), and Alan Pearson ($26,000 for a powerful expressionist portrait).

Coming up: Cordy's next antiques and art sale is September 6.

Webb's next major sale is September 20.

Dunbar Sloane is planning an art sale in Auckland for late September/early October. In March or April next year, Sloane's in Wellington will sell the collection of Sir Ivor Richardson, one of New Zealand's most eminent judges, and his wife Jane. Sloane's say this will be the most significant collection of 20th-century New Zealand art offered this decade.

The International Art Centre has a collectable sale on October 4, and an investment art sale planned for November. Both will be held in its refurbished downstairs premises at 272 Parnell Rd, below the retail gallery.