The antique book on early Australian colonial history bought in Dandenong, Victoria, inspired a collection amassed over 50 years which is coming to auction complete with many fresh-to-the-market items.
Mossgreen, a saleroom in the Melbourne suburb of Armadale, is offering the second part of this collection dedicated to the indigenous and colonial origins of this geographically huge country on June 28.
The same auction house (in association with Australian Book Auctions) handled the sale of the first part of this impressive array last year. That sale covered the period from the very First Fleet through to the end of the 19th century and in this further sale “the breadth of the collection is further revealed, to include Australian colonial furniture and works of art and International decorative arts”.
Joachim’s collecting quest led him from Australia to the UK, Continental Europe and the US.
As noted many times recently by ATG, the early photography collecting market is bringing strong results these days, and Joachim Part II features a collection of indigenous images.
Mossgreen CEO Paul Sumner says: “It includes some extraordinary pieces, that are being released to the market for the first time in 50 years and which have formed a very important part of this extraordinary private collection.”
A ‘rare and important' JW Lindt (1845-1926) Album of Australian Aboriginals 1873 is estimated at Aus$60,000-80,000.
Watercolour views are also offered. A Melbourne Album Containing a Series of Views of Melbourne & Country Districts c.1864 by Charles Troedel (1835-1906) is guided at Aus$20,000-40,000.
A watercolour attributed to Pierre-Antoine Marchais (1763-1859) of Aborigines in Landscape is estimated at Aus$30,000-50,000.
Australia put on the map
The map bound into the copy of David Collins’ An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales sold by Australian Book Auctions for Aus$26,000 (£15,115).
Along with photographs, early documents are sought-after by collectors. Staying with early Australian colonial history, on May 29 one of the last of the so-called ‘First Fleet’ journals to be published appeared at auction (as covered in ATG No 2297 by our books and works on paper expert Ian McKay).
Written by Judge Advocate David Collins, secretary, close friend and adviser to Governor Arthur Phillip, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales of 1798-1802 is also the most detailed of those early accounts of settlement.
An exceptional example offered by Australian Book Auctions (19.8% buyer’s premium) in a May 29 sale of the Michael Aitkin collection more than doubled the high estimate to sell at a record Aus$26,000 (£15,115).
Based almost entirely on the papers of Phillip’s successor as governor, John Hunter, and supplemented by official records and dispatches, the second volume is not as common as the first. It is, however, of great importance both for its chronicle of later events and for the narratives of many voyages and expeditions of discovery.
One such is “an account of a voyage performed by Captain Flinders and Mr Bass; by which the existence of a Strait separating Van Diemen’s Land from the continent of New Holland was ascertained”.
Bound into the first volume of this copy, evidently at the time of binding, is a folding manuscript map of the Australian continent with many features on the coast named. The auctioneers noted a suggestion that Matthew Flinders may have contributed to the map.
