Fancy some art, possums? Buy a piece from Barry Humphries’ Sydney home for as little as $250

Despite long periods living abroad, Barry Humphries considered Australia his true home and enjoyed the company of some of the nation’s greatest artists, who would invariably paint him – and sometimes he, them.

“Dad once said that he was a full-time actor and a part-time artist, but that he wished it was the other way around,” son Oscar Humphries notes. “I think he was conscious of the limits of his talents in fine art. He was a Picasso of comedy and a very gifted amateur artist in two dimensions.”

Some 98 objects, mostly packed up from Humphries’ Sydney home, will be auctioned next month – among them are 47 by the late comic’s own hand.

The master satirist died in April 2023 after complications from hip surgery.

They reveal the creator of Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson to be as wicked a wit in watercolours, crayon and pen as he was under the stage spotlight.

The master satirist died in April 2023 after complications from hip surgery, bringing to an end a celebrated career on the global stage.

Caricatures selected for the Leonard Joel auction were made on the road in Australia, the US, Greece and elsewhere. Humphries didn’t spare the ridicule, drawing himself in the same exaggerated style.

Madeleine Mackenzie, head of decorative arts and art at the Leonard Joel Sydney showroom, with some of the Barry Humphries collection.Credit: Sitthixay Ditthavong

Among them is a study of lifelong artist friend John Olsen, with signature beret and cravat, who joined Humphries on painting trips to the Adelaide Hills.

“These caricatures have the closest relationship with the characters he created,” Oscar says. “Edna is a caricature of a provincial snobby housewife; she was a living character whereas these works are all static.

“They sort of unite Dad’s two selves and are clearly by someone who is both a comic and an artist. They are spot on, sharp and funny. They are Edna one-liners in visual form.”

Humphries began painting with “conscious intent from age eight”, signing his work “Barry Humphries” and not John, his given name. By age 11 he had begun saving up to buy art and second-hand books.

Barry Humphries in 2021 with his landscape painting of Wilpena, South Australia.

Clifton Pugh’s study of Barry Humphries aged 25 is among the auction’s most expensive lots. 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 acquisition.

Pugh is credited with reviving Humphries’ childhood interest in art and helped him mount an exhibition of his works in the gallery of the Victorian Artists’ Society, believed to be Humphries’ first show after university.

Australian art dealer and journalist Oscar Humphries. Credit: Jenny Magee

The Humphries family, including widow Lizzie Spender and Oscar’s three siblings, hopes it will be sold to a museum.

The earliest of the 47 works by Humphries, from 1966, was exhibited as part of the exhibition Big: Barry Humphries: Dada Artist at the National Gallery of Australia in 1993. It’s one of the few remaining early works of Humphries, says Leonard Joel’s head of decorative arts and art, Madeleine Mackenzie.

A more recent work, The Corporate Smile 2019, is the most ambitious painting Humphries produced in terms of scale, and is created in the style of Andy Warhol, depicting an anonymous patriarchal figure.

Barry Humphries’ work featuring Dame Edna.Credit: Leonard Joel

Humphries’ landscape paintings – represented by several watercolours including scenes from Paris – were more serious studies.

The auction items, though eclectic, are not what Humphries the younger – a fine art dealer – calls memorabilia.

“It’s more elevated than that,” he says. “It’s an opportunity to have something that was precious to Dad.”

Estimates start at $250 for Humphries’ works on paper and have been priced to be accessible to fans. “The auction is so special as it offers an opportunity to highlight these two aspects to Barry’s character, the artist and the collector,” Mackenzie says.

The Humphries family is also selling sculptures and drawings collected by their father by early 20th-century French artists, including George Barbier and Alfred Auguste Janniot.

Photographs from this century and last feature Marlene Dietrich, Kylie Minogue, Pattie Boyd and Joanna Lumley. Kylie signed her nude image: “Dear Barry, Bottoms Up! Kisses Kylie x”.

The Australian sale follows Christie’s auction in London in February, which netted nearly $10 million, including buyer’s premiums, vastly exceeding sale expectations.

“Collectors are a bit like addicts,” Oscar says of his father. “They are always buying things, so their loved ones have this strange binary relationship with these things. They buy things secretly and there is no form of collecting more selfish than a book collector. The decision you must come to is, do you want to live in a museum or do you want to be freer and share the spirit?”

Barry Humphries: Artist and Collector auction will be held in the Woollahra offices of Leonard Joel on June 3.

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