Saleroom: Local works feature in a 'quiet' auction

By DON MILNE

Expectations run high when buying and selling art, so after Webb's record-breaking June sale which fetched more than $2.6 million, some aficionados were describing its auction last month as flat. "Quiet" might be a better term, and even that's hardly fair for an auction at which just over $1 million worth of works were sold. Buyers and spectators may have been misled by the number of works passed in, but a high proportion sold afterwards as satisfactory prices were negotiated.

Historic photographs, mostly of Maori or Pacific subjects made up just over a third of the 200-plus works on sale. Top price was $1150 ($1279.38, with 10 per cent buyer's premium and GST) for an Arthur Northwood picture of a gum-digger knee-deep in a Northland swamp. Prices for such works are creeping up and averaged just over $400 (including premium and GST) at this sale.

By contrast, works in the rest of the sale by New Zealand and foreign artists averaged $12,400, ranging from just over $100 to just under $200,000. That price ($175,000 before premium and GST) was reached for one of Ralph Hotere's Black Union Jack series, painted in response to the 1981 Springbok tour and carrying a strong anti-nuclear message.

Clearly, good works by Hotere continue to sell strongly - three lithographs from his Winter Solstice series of 1991 attracted spirited bidding and went for $6000, $7500 and $8000 (hammer price). Bird paintings by Bill Hammond also sold well (top price $61,000), as did New Zealand scenes by Peter McIntyre (top $40,000).

By contrast, three works by Tony Fomison, and others by Grahame Sydney, Rita Angus, Jeffrey Harris and Billy Apple weren't sold. Two paintings by Toss Woollaston, one a harmonium player and the other a portrait of a young man, sold, but both were under the lower estimate. Were expectations too high or did they simply not appeal?

Buyers have always been discriminating. Quality, rarity and condition all come into account when buying art. Take the well-known colonial artist John Barr Clark Hoyte, who painted in New Zealand from 1860 to 1879, then took his watercolour skills to Sydney, where he had already established a reputation.

Hoyte, who died in 1913, aged 77, was prolific, so the quality of his work varies. He had his imitators and, if his watercolours have been exposed to too much light, they can fade badly.

His generally appealing works come up at just about every auction and can sell for anything from $1000 or $1500 to the $37,500 fetched for a view of the Waitemata Harbour at Dunbar Sloane in August.

Fine works of popular subjects in very good condition sell for even more. Webb's had three which sold for $15,000, $20,000 and $21,000 - in each instance a bit below the lower estimate.

Coming up: Cordy's have a morning and evening antique and art sale next Tuesday (October 15).

Webb's next affordable art auction (estimated values mostly between $100 and $5000) is on October 29. Its final major art, jewellery and decorative arts sale for the year is on December 10-12.

The International Art Centre's next sale is on November 7. Highlights will include what is described as an outstanding collection of McIntyres.

Two maritime sales will be held in November to mark the America's Cup. Dunbar Sloane's will be on Sunday, November 10, and Webb's, which will include the Kelly Tarlton shipwreck museum and library, along with sporting memorabilia, on November 25-27.