Australia’s two biggest art auction houses are shaping up for the painterly equivalent of a heavyweight championship, as buyer enthusiasm for expensive art objects remains apparently undented by this year’s succession of official interest rate hikes.

Major end-of-year auction sales by rivals Smith & Singer and Deutscher and Hackett will be held in Sydney on November 21 and 22 respectively. Both sales will present works that have never come to auction and whose art history significance is indisputable.