Oceania

Art and antiques owned by the late businessman James Fairfax will be offered at auction next month.

A painting by UK-born Australian artist Sir Russell Drysdale (1912-1981) has fetched AUD$2.97m when it was sold by Mossgreen in Adelaide on Sunday 25 June. The price is the fifth highest at auction for any Australian artwork.

Bonhams has promoted Merryn Schriever to become the company’s director in Australia, following the departure of chairman Mark Fraser.

A lifelong interesting in collecting can be sparked off by so many different things. For Australian Denis Joachim it was a purchase in a second-hand bookshop when he was just 18 years old.

A portrait of a Maori chief by New Zealand artist Charles F Goldie (1870-1947) more than doubled its money in the space of five months after returning to its homeland from the UK.

Australian auctioneers Mossgreen set an AUS$2m record for a single-owner sale of Asian Art sold down-under when they offered part of Raphy Star’s collection in Sydney earlier this month.

Auction specialists in Australia have found a rare Ming Dynasty banknote hidden within a Chinese wooden sculpture. The discovery came at Mossgreen as they were cataloguing the extensive collection of Raphy Star – one of the most important collections of Asian art ever to be offered in the country.

Paintings by the intensely private artist Keith Cunningham are to be reintroduced to the public during an upcoming exhibition in Hoxton.

A UK-based art collector has been banned from exporting a World War II era painting from Australia.

Dreweatts & Bloomsbury have announced two new alliances as they reshape the wider business as part of the Stanley Gibbons Group.

Mossgreen will be offering one of the most talked about items of the year at their forthcoming sale in Melbourne. The auction will feature this elaborately carved and inlaid cradle made for Princess Helena, Queen Victoria’s fifth child.

Leonard Joel of Melbourne will be marking the 50th anniversary of the Beatles arriving to tour Australia by offering a collection of photographs taken of the group in Adelaide.

A new record for any work of art sold in New Zealand was set when Webb’s in Auckland sold this pair of 19th century Chinese carved rhinoceros horns for NZ$680,000 (£375,700).

Fred Williams’ ‘You Yangs Landscape 1’ of 1963 made the highest price of the 89-lot sale of Australian art from the Reg Grundy and Joy Chambers-Grundy collection when it sold for Aus$1.9m (£1.2m).

It has a face value of ten shillings but a price tag of Aus$3.5m (£2.3m) at Coinworks, the specialist dealers and auctioneers of Melbourne.

Two auction houses are joining forces in the latest shake-up to affect the Melbourne scene.