Two paintings by major Australian artists Arthur Boyd and Ethel Carrick Fox have been rediscovered in private collections overseas and brought home to be sold on the secondary market for the first time. The rediscoveries are cause for celebration for Smith & Singer chairman Geoffrey Smith, who located the works, and are among the highlights of the company’s last art auction of the year next week in Sydney.

Carrick’s small and joyous oil painting, Esquisse en Australie/Sketch in Australia, from 1908, depicts an idyllic, sun-dappled scene in Sydney’s Botanical Gardens, with children at play and adults relaxing on a tender green lawn. The painting returns to Australia more than 110 years after it was exhibited at the influential Salon d’Automne in Paris, which presented the work of young artists and was founded as an alternative to the official and formal Salon. Smith & Singer has given the Carrick painting an estimate of $60,000 to $80,000.