The most expensive artwork ever sold at auction in Australia is back on the market less than two years after it was offered at Menzies in Sydney in a loudly proclaimed solo sale.
Brett Whiteley’s Henri’s Armchair, 1974-1975, a sultry, plum-coloured painting of an interior scene of the Lavender Bay home the artist shared with his then wife Wendy, sold at its low estimate of $5 million in November 2020. With buyer’s fees added, the painting cost its new owner at total of $6.1 million, a record-breaking price.
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Gabriella Coslovich is an arts journalist with more than 20 years’ experience, including 15 at The Age, where she was a senior arts writer. Her book, Whiteley on Trial, on Australia’s most audacious of alleged art fraud, won a Walkley in 2018.
