March
130 years on, Australian art history comes out of the woodwork
An Arthur Streeton painting of a hallowed art location and a canvas that rocketed Brett Whiteley towards his eventual fame will be auctioned in April.
February
Barry Humphries’ estate tops $9m as NY Indigenous sale returns
The first works to feature in big local auctions are emerging on the back of a blockbuster sale of Barry Humphries’ personal collection in London.
September 2024
‘Mosman Bay’ stars on a sobering night at Bonhams art auction
Arthur Streeton’s beach scene brought almost half the total take as many works went unsold in Sydney; Leonard Joel gathers 133 lots for this year’s Women Artists’ sale.
Female sculptors deliver at mid-year art sales
Bronywn Oliver and Gloria Thancoupie caught collectors’ eyes, while a piece of Mosman history with a colourful past is back on the market.
August 2024
Photos go stratospheric with prices 100 times expectations
Photographs of space travel and heavy industry burst free of their lacklustre expectations in an extraordinary auction this week.
April 2024
Streeton stuns at $10m art auction
Arthur Streeton’s historic scene took top honours, but works by Bronwyn Oliver and Nicholas Harding were the big surprises.
Streeton, Campbell works promise hefty returns in $12m art sale
An Arthur Streeton painting bought for £7 has hopes of $1.5 million at the year’s first big sale.
December 2023
Art sales top $140m but it’s a buyers’ market now
Australian art auction houses largely defied inflation, interest rates and conflict, but the pandemic-era surge has run its course.
November 2023
Like ‘light fittings’: Murdoch family to sell underappreciated art
Three beguiling paintings that for generations hung in obscurity at a Murdoch family grazing property are expected to fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars.
August 2023
Sculpture smashes $1m barrier as ‘grotesque and meaningless’ painting brings $950k
Joel Elenberg’s depiction of his wife Anna Schwartz set an auction record for a sculpture in Australia, while Arthur Streeton’s cigar box lid had plenty of admirers.
$600k for a small, ‘grotesque and meaningless’ painting?
Fred Williams might top Smith & Singer’s big mid-year sale of Australian and international art, but the more modest works have the most intriguing stories.
Impressionist Russell’s Souvenir tops $11m-plus sale
A work by the Australian painter who taught Impressionism to Matisse tops Deutscher and Hackett’s August sale, which could prove the biggest of the year so far.
May 2023
Drysdale dances to heights but art market turns cautious
A Russell Drysdale proved the first work to pass the $2 million mark at auction this year, but for the second night in a row the overall result was underwhelming.
How Smith & Singer’s big Sydney sale failed to fire
The sale was meant to be one of the biggest of the year, but several of the most highly priced works failed to sell.
April 2023
Olsen, Arkley and other art stars headline $10m sale
How the market reacts to John Olsen’s death will be tested when he joins a who’s who of modern Australian art - and a few Lucian Freuds - in Smith & Singer’s sale.
March 2023
Golden Goldie: ‘I paid about $900,000. It will make $1.6m’
Art dealer Denis Savill is offloading a rare work by New Zealand’s most highly prized artist, Charles Goldie, but thinks selling in Sydney will be more profitable.
February 2023
Found Streeton painting of a mate down the pub sells for $34,000
A small Arthur Streeton painting, discovered between the leaves of an old book, will join the 165,000 artworks in the State Library of NSW’s collection.
December 2022
The 10 top art sales of the year
A record number of women made it into the top ten auction prices this year. That number was two.
October 2022
26 paintings sell to one bidder as Cbus sale winds up
An entire exhibition of desert art works from 1990 was the last tranche from Cbus’s collection.
September 2022
From German WWII prisoner to important Australian modernist
German-Australian artist Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack might not be a household name, but his reputation in the art world is expected to deliver strong results for his abstract works.