The magical panoramas of Venice and the brushwork of Australia’s most famed impressionist, Arthur Streeton, are a combination guaranteed to spark bidding rallies at auction. And so they did last week at Smith and Singer in Sydney, where Streeton’s 1908 oil painting, Evening Light (Venice), of the Doge’s Palace and Piazzetta San Marco, rose more than half a million dollars above its high estimate to sell for $1.25 million (hammer).

“It was just such a glorious composition … it was a show-stopper, actually,” says Smith and Singer chairman Geoffrey Smith. “Everyone really admired and gravitated to it.”