The art collections of two colourful Australians will be auctioned in Sydney and Melbourne on Tuesday, in a coincidence that offers buyers everything from Chinese contemporary painting and German Expressionism to a silver throne and pop art.

The late, iconoclastic art dealer Ray Hughes revelled in bringing a frisson to Sydney’s weekend gallery crawl. An encounter with a Ghanaian coffin carved into the shape of a crab, or the latest subversive art winkled out by Hughes over long lunches with artists in Beijing cafes, was always on the cards.