‘Everyone wants a piece of Barry’: Humphries’ art hits auction highs

Two years after his death, the creator of Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson can still pull a crowd and steal a show.

Some 98 objects, mostly packed up from Barry Humphries’ Sydney home, went under the hammer on Monday night in an Australian auction of his personal art which exceeded auction house Leonard Joel’s most optimistic sale expectations. All up the Australian sale netted $477,112 including buyers’ premium.

Clifton Pugh’s portrait of the young Barry Humphries sold for $36,000 under the hammer. Credit: Steven Siewert

“He’d be saying, ‘I told you I was good!’, and he’d be planning an exhibition,” said son Oscar, from London as he watched the auction live.

With his share of the proceeds, Oscar Humphries said he would frame works he held by his father and raised the idea of funding a comedy prize in Melbourne “for people who are actually funny”.

In 2019, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival stripped Barry Humphries’s name from the festival’s biggest award, following furore over the performer’s comments about transgender people.

“If someone wants to match me we could talk,” said Oscar. “We could recreate the Barry awards. I’m good for $50,000, but I have got to find a partner.”

A Sydney auction of Humphries’ art and collected artworks netted almost $500,000.

The opening lot at the auction was a framed watercolour and pen likeness by Humphries of his comic creation Dame Edna. It signalled the excitable buyer interest that was to come for works by the comic, selling for $17,000 under the hammer or $21,250 with buyers’ premium. It had a top estimate before auction of $3000.

Caricatures penned by Humphries while on the road in Australia, the US, Greece and elsewhere fetched several thousand dollars a piece.

Among the more than 1000 registered bidders were mums and dads, autograph hunters and astute collectors, said Madeleine Mackenzie, head of decorative arts and art at auction house Leonard Joel, with price tussles taking place mostly online and by telephone. Fifty or so people crammed the showroom. At any one time, there were joined by more than 400 people online.

Telephone bidders at the Leonard Joel auction. Credit: Steven Siewert

Lot 48, Clifton Pugh’s study of a young Barry Humphries was the most expensive purchase of the night. It was completed in 1959, four years after the character of Dame Edna was conceived, and about the same year as Humphries took a steamer to Europe to tour his one-man show.

A related portrait was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery as its first-ever acquisition and his family had hoped this might also go to an institution. It sold under the hammer for $36,000 to a private collector.

A Terrence Donovan photograph of the actress Joanne Lumley signed “For my darling hero Barry Humphries from his adoring servant, Joanna Lumley xx”, fetched $7000 under the hammer or $8750 with buyers’ premium. A nude photograph of Kylie Minogue signed, “Dear Barry, Bottoms Up! Kisses Kylie x”, sold for $17,500 with buyers’ premium.

Minor works collected by Humphries but not boasting his signature sold more modestly. All but three of the 98 works sold under the hammer.

“The success of tonight’s auction shows how beloved Barry Humphries was and still is to the Australian public,” Mackenzie said. “The importance of provenance and personal taste was really on display tonight with everyone wanting a piece of Barry.”

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