The auction year is drawing to a close but there’s no stopping keen collectors who are spending big on quality works and toppling auction records. Four new records were set for artists ranging from the contemporary to the historic at Smith & Singer’s last art auction of the year. New highs were posted for Del Kathryn Barton, Albert Namatjira, Julie Rrap and Gertrude Fenton. For auction house chairman Geoffrey Smith, the greatest thrill was the record achieved for Namatjira, double the artist’s previous hammer record that Smith set in 2016 at Sotheby’s Australia. Namatjira’s watercolour on paper, Waters of the Finke, created in 1958, a year before his death, sold for $200,000 (hammer), five times its low estimate of $40,000.