Australia

Selection of contents from Sydney house of media family comes to auction in Australia

A pair of Wedgwood kangaroo figures brought to the recent AAADA Antiques & Art Fair Sydney by The Antique Guild proved appropriately attractive to buyers.

Many of the high prices achieved at last week’s ‘celebrity’ sale titled Bob Hawke & Blanche d’Alpuget: Mementos, Curiosities, Art and Design reflected the impact of souvenir hunters, anxious to own a reminder of Australia’s former prime minister who died earlier this year. But not all of them.

Our ATG reporters travel far and wide to bring you the best coverage of art and antiques... pictured here is Dealers’ Diary writer Frances Allitt in Brisbane, Australia.

Works by the Irish artist Paul Henry (1877-1958) appear frequently in Irish and UK salerooms but it is far more unusual for a painting by the Belfast-born painter – whose favoured subject matter was views of the west of Ireland – to emerge in Australia.

It was decades after the First Fleet landed in Sydney cove in 1788 before anything like a recognisable silver trade developed in Australia, writes Jolyon Warwick James.

Two French scenes by much-travelled husband-and-wife artists Ethel Carrick (1872-1952) and Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865-1915) are highlights of Sotheby’s sale of Australian Art to be held in Sydney on August 27.

The famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba once owned this pair of ‘Dragon and Phoenix’ bottle vases which were sold at auction from her estate in 2015.

Gold rush era jewellery from Down Under is a rare visitor to UK salerooms but, remarkably, several pieces have appeared for sale in recent months.

Lots relating to explorer Matthew Flinders are particularly topical given that his grave has just been re-discovered in a graveyard under Euston station as part of works for the HS2 high-speed railway line.

A London scene by an important Modern British painter will be offered at Deutscher and Hackett in Sydney on November 28.

Listing of auctions coming up in Australia.

“If I was to select just one lot we have sold this year,” says John Albrecht, managing director at Leonard Joel, “it would be the haunting, period photo of Australia’s infamous bushranger, Ned Kelly, taken in 1874 after a boxing match.”

Presented to Captain William Lonsdale (1799-1864) in 1842 by the people of Melbourne in recognition of his services to the founding colony, the Lonsdale Silver Presentation has remained in his descendants’ care for 176 years.

After almost a decade of flatlining annual sales and the collapse of Mossgreen, Australia’s auctioneers are vocal about the improving market.

Eight envelopes from the 1870s, each decorated with a scene from Lewis Carroll’s famous book Alice in Wonderland are to be offered at Abacus Auctions’ December 1 sale of stamps, postal history and picture postcards.

Sotheby’s Australia has moved to new premises in the ‘Paris End’ of Melbourne.