Bracing for the worst amid a pandemic, auction houses around the world revamped their businesses, innovated on the run, and shifted sales online at a rapid rate. In Australia, it was no different. Online bidding here has risen to a level that was unimaginable even a couple of years ago – no one would have foreseen that an online bidder might surge ahead with a winning bid of $2.5 million for a painting, and yet in April a collector did just that, buying Arthur Streeton’s The Grand Canal at Deutscher and Hackett. Or that an auction house might put a solitary work in a timed online sale – an entirely computerised process – and set a new record, as Smith & Singer did last month with an editioned screenprint of Banksy’s Love is in the Air, which sold for $150,000 (hammer), the highest price paid for a Banksy at auction in Australia. The lucky vendor bought the Banksy for $300 at museum gift shop in 2003.

But buying online requires trust – you don’t bid $2.5 million over the internet unless you know who you’re dealing with. Companies such as Deutscher and Hackett, or Smith & Singer, are known quantities, and they back the art they sell. When a vendor consigns an artwork to a major auction house, it checks the artwork’s provenance from scratch, it does the hard work of cataloguing, and it takes responsibility for the claims it makes. If the Streeton or the Banksy turns out to be a provable forgery, the sale will be cancelled, and the buyer refunded (within time limits).