‘I used to be a bit mean about it’: One thing Barry Humphries’ son regrets about their relationship

London: Among Oscar Humphries’ regrets about his relationship with his late father is that they too often fought like cats and dogs about art.

“I wish I’d been nicer about his painting when he was alive,” he says of his dad, Barry Humphries.

“I always used to be a bit mean about it. He hated it … it really annoyed him.”

Oscar Humphries says the scale at which his late father collected art and rare books will be news to many people.Credit: Jenny Magee

Their relationship created headlines at times. A public falling out before a warm reunion. Humphries jnr has also spoken about a difficult adolescence and struggles with mental health and addiction.

But art was always their thing. As Oscar puts it: some families are brought together by sport; theirs had art. It was their fierce disagreements that would push Oscar to forge his own career in art. He edited the British art magazine Apollo, but has since gravitated towards curating exhibitions and dealing in fine art and design.

“I couldn’t be an actor because, as the son of an actor, you can’t because you’ll fail,” he says.

Barry Humphries at home in 2021 with his own painting, a landscape of Wilpena in South Australia.

“He hated contemporary art, so perhaps it was a field in which I could make my own career because it’s so far apart from Dad’s world.”

Deep in the basement of London auction house Christie’s on King Street in St James’s, its base since 1823, the 43-year-old son of the legendary Australian actor, writer, painter and scholar – described as one of the greatest raconteurs and stand-up comedians of his age – is perusing some of his dad’s most prized possessions.

Barry Humphries, a boy from suburban Melbourne who would earn world renown for his characters Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, started collecting art and second-hand books in his teens. Over more than half a century, he built a collection driven by knowledge, passion and curiosity.

Now 250 items, ranging from the work of Anglo-Australian impressionist artist Charles Conder to a first edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest inscribed to Leonard Smithers, one of the most innovative and influential printers of the period, will go under the hammer.

Friends to the end: Painter John Olsen and Humphries.

Alongside them are Humphries’ own art, books and letters from F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a collection of Edna’s costumes, “face furniture” (glasses) and caricatures. There are examples of Impressionist and Modern British art from Jan Sluijters to Sir William Nicholson, and Modern Design including a chandelier by Edgar Brandt.

Estimates range from £200 ($400) to £300,000. The collection is expected to raise up to £4 million, with some lots benefiting The Royal Variety Charity that Humphries supported for decades.

Charles Conder’s Sand dunes, Ambleteuse as it was displayed in Barry Humphries and Lizzie Spender’s North London home. Credit: Christies

Still mourning the loss of his father, in April 2023, Oscar says many have asked why his stepmother, Lizzie Spender, and the family are offloading some of these treasures.

“Lizzie potentially was faced with a choice to create a shrine to Barry with all these things and 6000 books and every inch of wall with a picture on it, or do you celebrate him as a collector and make room in your life for the next life?” he says.

“Because, you know, who would want to live in a museum? Apart from Dad.”

As we wander around just a small part of the collection at Christie’s, Oscar remembers their place in the family home, where paintings and sculptures jostled for space with the books. One on the stairs, another in his study, he says. This one was never hung he didn’t think. And finally Conder, whose works filled the dining room, sat above fireplaces and were pervasive elsewhere in the house.

Oscar says his father could not have been fonder of Conder’s work, having owned what was once described by fellow ex-pat Clive James as the world’s largest private collection.

“I think Conder appealed to Dad because here’s an Australian who goes to London and then, quite quickly, finds himself surrounded by these great artists and Oscar Wilde,” he says.

“And, of course, Dad in 1959 saved up. He sold an artwork he bought as a child. And took a steamer to Europe. And had this whole British career.”

Conder was one of the key founders of the Heidelberg School of Australian Impressionism with Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton. A central part of Humphries’ collection is Conder’s 1901 Sand dunes, Ambleteuse, oil painting.

Oscar points to the way the beach and scrub of Normandy, France are portrayed and suggests there’s an element of homesickness in how he’s painted the foreground.

“I think living with Australian art was a way of connecting with and remembering home,” he says of his father.

Oscar previewing the back catalogue of Barry Humphries’ collection in London.Credit: Jenny Magee

Over the next half an hour, some of the most important and influential names in Australian and world art and literature over the past century are mentioned at random.

Almost all in the sense of Barry Humphries being a fan or a friend. Often both. On the wall is a work by Arthur Boyd, one of Australia’s most widely respected and prolific modern artists. It’s of Humphries himself painting in the bush near Shoalhaven.

An inscription reads: “Happy Birthday Barry … Love Yvonne and Arthur … Please come back.”

Artist Sidney Nolan and Humphries met in 1950s London. Oscar says they did night shifts together in an ice-cream factory. They had a mutual friend, Nobel Laureate Patrick White. John Olsen’s name comes up too. He would join Humphries and fellow artists Tim Storrier and David Dryden on painting expeditions to the Flinders Ranges in remote South Australia. Another of Humphries’ friends was John Betjeman, the British poet laureate from 1972 until his death and a much-loved figure on television. Both shared a love of Conder and Wilde.

Arthur Boyd’s portrait of Barry Humphries painting near Shoalhaven.Credit: Jenny Magee

Humphries loved and collected the work of figures associated with Wilde – his literary idol – including Aubrey Beardsley and Max Beerbohm. A caricature of Conder by Beerbohm is also part of the collection.

Christie’s specialist Benedict Winter gets out another Wilde book. There’s something he wants us to see. Inside are letters between Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, an English poet and journalist, and Wilde’s lover.

“That’s ridiculous that those letters are in there,” Oscar says. “I have never seen them.”

Barry Humphries was active in the art and books market, selling and buying, always on watch for his next must-have.

Oscar recalled his dad calling from Florida in the United States, where he was touring, to say he was buying a sketch by Gustave Dore (The Witch, lot 195 in this collection) with a residual cheque he’d received from playing Bruce the shark in the Pixar film Finding Nemo.

At this point, Oscar’s face lights up. “You’ll love this,” he says. “This is one of Dad’s!”

He opens up the double-breasted check jacket he’s wearing to reveal a wide and deep pocket on the left-hand side.

“They’re called a poacher’s pocket. You could steal a book if you wanted to or, you know, smuggle one home without someone finding out. He’d have had it made this way,” he says.

“Dad would buy things that he couldn’t afford and – much to the annoyance but also amusement of Lizzie – try and keep purchases secret.”

A first edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, inscribed by Wilde to Leonard Smithers, the publisher of the book and one of the crucial figures of the Aesthetic movement.Credit: Jenny Magee

Part of Humphries’ legacy was contested in his final years when the Melbourne International Comedy Festival – which he was influential in founding – in 2019 renamed its Barry Award for best comedian following Humphries’ comments about transgender people, which festival organisers deemed “not helpful”.

Oscar, named by his father after Wilde, said a huge proportion of his father’s library was “full of queer writers”.

“You know, I’m named after an LGBTQA hero. This reinforces his sort of humanity and his sensitivity around these things and makes ridiculous the fact that he could be a bigot, which he wasn’t,” he says.

Christie’s says the interest in the auction has been global, including from Australian galleries, not just because of their famous owner but the rarity of the work by many giants.

“People will know Edna in his public life, but the way in which he collected and some of the amazing things that he owned will be new to people,” Oscar says. “And it’s such an important facet of Dad’s character. He was endlessly curious.”

The Barry Humphries: The Personal Collection is available to view online at christies.com. The auction is on February 13.

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