IMPORTANT & RARE ART
Auction 6:00pm Tuesday 26 November 2024
Inside cover: Lot 32
Illustrated cover: Lot 25
CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE
Thoughts of a Tohunga: Wharekauri Tahuna
a Chieftain of the Tūhoe Tribe, 1938
RITA ANGUS
Westshore, Napier
IMPORTANT & RARE ART
26.11.24
AUCTION
6pm Tuesday 26 November International Art Centre
202 Parnell Rd, Parnell, Auckland
VIEWING
Wednesday 20 November 9am - 5pm
Thursday 21 November 9am - 5pm
Friday 22 November 9am - 5pm
Saturday 23 November 10am - 4pm
Sunday 24 November 11am - 4pm
Monday 25 November 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 26 November 9am - 5pm
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Directors Richard Thomson & Frances Davies 202 Parnell Road Auckland New Zealand
IMPORTANT & RARE ART
2024 HIGHLIGHTS
DON BINNEY
Swoop of the Kotare Acrylic on Steinbach 109 x 71.5
Realised: $848,470
CHARLES F GOLDIE
A Chief of the Ngāti Mahuta Tribe Te Kamaka, Ngāti Maniapoto, 1916 - ‘The Whitening Snows of Venerable Eld.’ Oil on canvas 26 x 19 cm
Realised: $942,300
ROBIN WHITE
Allan’s Beach
Watercolour and acrylic on paper 28 x 22
Realised: $31,232
*Prices include buyer’s premium
Toss Woollaston: Figures from Life
Curated by Jane Davidson-Ladd
BRENT WONG Cloud Coast
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BUYERS PREMIUM
18.5% plus GST
Bronze, edition 13/15, 38 x 28
Signed, stamped & editioned
$5,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland Commissioned by Peter Webb from the artist
1 BARRY LETT (1940 - 2017) Watchdog
Watercolour, gold dust and acrylic on canvas 85 x 90
Signed, inscribed & dated 2021 verso
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wellington
Acquired from Bartley & Company Art, Wellington
2 ROGER MORTIMER (b. 1956)
Wanganui
3
MAX GIMBLETT (b. 1935)
Sea Anemone
Plaster weld, plaster polyurethane and Swiss gold on wooden quatrefoil 38 x 38
Signed, inscribed & dated 2003 verso
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
4
MAX GIMBLETT (b. 1935)
The Queen of 4 Quarters
Plaster weld, plaster polyurethane and Swiss gold on wooden quatrefoil 38 x 38
Signed, inscribed & dated 2004 verso
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
Sheffield, Canterbury Railway Station Oil on canvas on board 35 x 45
Signed & dated 1954
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
The Rotorua Art Gallery and Museum, 1985
5 RATA LOVELL-SMITH (1894 - 1969)
6 JOHN EDGAR (1950 - 2021)
Flying Cross
Granite (India), Marble (Italy) 56 x 105
Accompanied by certificate of authenticity
$6,000 - 9,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Christchurch
EXHIBITED
Lie of the Land, 1998 - 99
National touring exhibition: Auckland Museum, Auckland (February 1998), Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt (May 1998), Southland Art Gallery, Invercargill (December 1998), Suter Art Gallery, Nelson (February 1999), Sarjeant Art Gallery, Whanganui (April 1999), Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier (June 1999), Waikato Museum of Art and History, Hamilton (August 1999)
7 ANN ROBINSON (b. 1944)
Nikau Vase
Pale Steel Blue, 45% lead crystal glass, edition 1/1 48 x 22
Signed, editioned & dated 2003 on base
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland Commissioned from the artist
8 STAR GOSSAGE (b. 1973)
Koura Oil on linen 60 x 50
Signed, inscribed & dated 2005 verso
$12,000 - 16,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
Acquired from Tinakori Gallery, 2005
9 STAR GOSSAGE (b. 1973)
On the Wing of a Bell Oil on board 122 x 80
Signed, inscribed & dated 2004 verso
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
Acquired from Tinakori Gallery, 2005
EXHIBITED
Kia tau te Rangimārie – Let Peace be Among Us, Pātaka Art + Museum, 4 July – 30 October 2022
10 STAR GOSSAGE (b. 1973)
Before there was Light Oil on canvas 101.5 x 76
Signed, inscribed & dated 2005 verso
$24,000 - 28,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
Acquired from Tinakori Gallery, 2005
EXHIBITED
Kia tau te Rangimārie – Let Peace be Among Us, Pātaka Art + Museum, 4 July – 30 October 2022
11 STAR GOSSAGE (b. 1973)
Untitled Oil on board 42.5 x 32
Signed, inscribed & dated 2004 verso
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Piggery Bookshop/Porcine Gallery, Whangārei
Private Collection, Auckland
Signed & dated 1998
$35,000 - 50,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Art+Object, Important Paintings & Contemporary Art, 23/08/2018, Lot No. 44
12
SHANE COTTON (b. 1964)
Corinth Oil on canvas 56 x 101.5
PROVENANCE
City in Cultivated Landscape
Oil on hardboard 122 x 122
Signed & dated 1965
$35,000 - 45,000
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Petar/James Gallery, Auckland
13 ROBERT ELLIS (1929 - 2021)
38.5 x 57.2
Signed & dated 1998
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland, thence by descent
Originally acquired from Jonathan Grant Galleries
14 BRENT WONG (b. 1945)
Cloud Coast
Acrylic on board
PROVENANCE
Untitled Oil on canvas 120 x 110
Signed & dated May 1990 verso
$25,000 - 35,000
Private Collection, Hamilton
ILLUSTRATED
Karl Maughan, Auckland University Press in association with Gow Langsford Gallery, 2020, plate 24
15 KARL MAUGHAN (b. 1964)
PHILIP TRUSTTUM (b. 1940)
Garden Series, Sunset Oil on board 92 x 65
Signed & dated 1972
$35,000 - 45,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
At just 20 years of age Trusttum was accepted into the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, where he was taught by Rudolf Gopas (among others), who was to prove a strong influence on the young artist. He was also invited to exhibit with The Group, a circle of well-known Canterbury artists whose members included Colin McCahon, Toss Woollaston and Doris Lusk.
The first of Trusttum’s Garden paintings to be seen in Auckland were in a three-person show with the works by Don Driver and Brian Reid, at the New Vision Gallery in October 1973. They were very popular at the time and helped to cement the artist’s reputation. These works were painted over a short period and were diverse in appearance, from open and relatively naturalistic garden views to intense close-ups of trees and plants. The works received a hugely enthusiastic review from Hamish Keith who wrote in the Auckland Star: On this small showing, Philip Trusttum must surely be counted among the country’s best, most exciting and most individual painters. It is certainly one of the year’s most important shows
Keith’s review highlighted the key elements of Trusttum’s work: the association with Vincent van Gogh, the handling of paint, the vivid, expressive and even aggressive colour. Keith went on to say: the van Gogh reference is reasonable in some respects, such as the firm, painted outlines of forms including the larger plants and tree trunks and the roofs and chimneys, particularly when the buildings presented are referenced similarly as van Gogh’s rustic, thatched houses. In July 1974 Philip Trusttum was once again in an important group show; he was one of the six New Zealand artists in the exhibition The Artist’s Garden at New Vision Gallery and had four Garden paintings in the show.
17 PHILIP TRUSTTUM (b. 1940)
House on the Hill Oil on board 82.5 x 109
Signed & dated 1973 verso
$40,000 - 50,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Dunbar Sloane, Art & Antique Auction, 15/08/2001, Lot No. 577
T.J. & C. McNamara, Auckland
ILLUSTRATED
Philip Trusttum: Selected Works 1962-1979, Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui, 1980, p.34
Flowers & Mirror 1972/73
Oil on board 118 x 120.5
Signed Title inscribed verso
$12,000 - 18,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Petar/James Gallery, Auckland
18 PHILIP TRUSTTUM (b. 1940)
19
LAURENCE ABERHART (b. 1949)
Prisoner’s Dream (5 part work)
Silver gelatin, gold & selenium toned prints
17 x 24.5 each
Inscribed, signed & dated 1985/2003 verso
$24,000 - 28,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
NOTES
This composition is comprised of five separate works: Taranaki from Oeo Road, under Moonlight, 27-28 September 1999/2002 and four images from Fort Fort Jervois, Ripapa Island, Lyttelton Harbour 2000
ILLUSTRATED
Te Miringa Hohaia, Gregory O’Brien and Lara Strongman, Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance, Te Herenga Waka University Press Wellington, 2001, p.102
Lara Strongman, Contemporary New Zealand Photographers, Mountain View Publishing, Auckland, 2005, p.100
David Eggleton, Into the Light: A History of New Zealand Photography, Craig Potton, Nelson, 2006, p.147
Gregory O’Brien, Justin Paton, Aberhart, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2008, p.263
Atholl Anderson, Judith Binney, Aroha Harris, Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History
Bridget Williams, 2014, p.297
20 FIONA PARDINGTON (b. 1961)
He Kiwi Kāwhatawhata
Inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper, edition 7/10, 140 x 176
Signed & dated 2021 on artist label affixed verso $35,000 - 45,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland
21 TOSS WOOLLASTON (1910 - 98)
Greymouth Looking Back to Hills, c. 1955
Oil on board 45 x 31
Signed
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from John Leech Gallery
22 MILAN MRKUSICH (1925 - 2018)
Centre with Three Elements
Oil on canvas 87 x 87
Signed, inscribed & dated 1965
$70,000 - 90,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from International Art Centre, Important, Early & Rare New Zealand Art, 14/07/2011, Lot No. 35
23 DON BINNEY (1940 - 2012)
Arctic Skua, Whangaparaoa
Oil and acrylic on New Zealand flax fibre paper
74.5 x 55.5
Signed & dated 2008
$150,000 - 250,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wanaka
Acquired from Gallery Thirty Three, Wanaka
The Arctic skua is a medium-sized, graceful bird with long, pointed wings and a deep, rounded belly resembling a falcon in flight. Arctic skuas live most of their lives at sea, coming ashore only to breed in the Arctic summer. If sighted it will likely be solitary, soaring through the air. Although skuas are occasionally found around mainland coasts, they are more often seen on the Chatham and subantarctic islands.
Aerodynamic in form, the species is monochromatic in colour with the depth of darkness varying in occurrence. Strong and with a relentless attitude: skaus pursue other birds, often terns, to take their catch of fish whilst in flight. Driven and determined, the Arctic Skua captured Don Binney’s fascination.
The land depicted here is the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, north of Auckland. Binney saw this particular Arctic Skua fly over the Peninsula whilst aboard a vessel, having come through the Whangaparaoa channel from the direction of Tiritiri Matangi. Embodying Binney’s distinctive style, this composition brilliantly captures the bird in flight.
The flax fibre used as the surface for this painting is a natural New Zealand product that has the appearance of paper. However, the quality of flax fibre is comparative to canvas in its durability and in the way it takes paint. This adds a point of difference to the composition as it is a medium not often used by Binney and particularly not to this degree of scale.
24
DON BINNEY (1940 - 2012)
Kōtare Motukorea II
Oil stick and acrylic on paper 59.5 x 42
Signed & dated 2003
$150,000 - 250,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Tāwharanui Open Sanctuary Fundraiser, 6 May 2004
Don Binney is well known for his clean-edged modernist paintings of birds in the New Zealand landscape. In a 1977 interview with Patricia Sarr and Tom Turner, Binney described his motivation for painting: I paint and draw because I’m thoroughly committed to and involved with environmental, natural stimuli - the landscape, the wild-life . . . you must approach the landscape or the bush with reverence.
In this work Binney depicts Motukorea or Browns Island in the Hauraki Gulf, a favoured subject since 1970. From that time the artist made many drawings of Motukorea from Musick Point and other locations, aware of its status as one of the best preserved volcanoes in the Auckland region. Its geological form clearly fascinated him.
Through this painting of the free-spirited Kingfisher in flight we encounter a vibrant, and joyous expression of nature, untouched. Kōtare Motukorea II contains many of the visual elements that have come to be associated with the artist.
25
RITA ANGUS (1908 - 70)
Westshore, Napier
Watercolour 37 x 55.5
Signed & dated 1957
McGregor Wright Gallery Label Affixed Verso
$120,000 - 160,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Sotheby’s, Topographical Paintings, Drawings & Watercolours, London, 06/11/1985
EXHIBITED
The Group Show 57, The Art Gallery, Durham Street, Christchurch, 12 - 27 October ‘57, Cat no. 48
Attending Christchurch’s Canterbury School of Art in 1927, Rita Angus would go on to become highly influential in the development of modern and regionalist art, capturing the identity and presence of New Zealand with sensitive conviction. Angus exhibited frequently with the Canterbury Society of Arts and The Group. It would not be until thirty years into her artistic career that she would have her first solo exhibition in 1957 at the Centre Gallery in Wellington, exhibiting forty three works. Angus was represented in three exhibitions at the Auckland Art Gallery in the fifties, notably Five New Zealand Watercolourists, Nov - Dec 1958. A sister painting of the work in this catalogue, also titled Westshore, Napier was exhibited, dated six years prior to this entry but of similar size.
Born in Hastings, Angus spent a large amount of her childhood in Napier, frequently returning to the city throughout her adult life, often for extended periods of time. Westshore, Napier was exhibited the same year it was painted in The Group Show ‘57, alongside seven other of her works. Painted from a vantage point on Bluff Hill, the composition presents a sweeping view of the inlet flowing through industrial and residential buildings, with the vast expanse of the Kaweka Range in the distance. Typical of Angus’ watercolours, the work retains a sense of stillness.
Simplified yet delineated buildings coloured in steely blue and terracotta hues showcase her particular interest in geometrical structure. This is contrasted by the fluidity of the mountains in the background. Notably in the lower centre of the composition is a pumpkin patch. A symbol of fertility and growth, the pumpkin is painted in similar warm tones to that of the buildings behind and is presented surrounded by an unfurling halo of deeply green coloured leaves, contrasting the dry and stark hills in the distance. These branch upwards towards the settlement, anchoring the scene depicted.
Angus paints with a feminine strength, precise yet delicate in application. Subtle in commentary, but a vision of cultural identity and presence, Westshore, Napier is an amalgamation of both the technique and allegory which Angus is well known for. Although receiving acknowledgment from fellow artists throughout her life, appreciation from the general public was slow. Following her death in 1970 this would begin to gradually change, aided by the continuation of retrospective exhibitions.
EVELYN PAGE (1899 - 1988)
Aix-en-Provence
Oil on canvas 40.7 x 30.5
Signed, inscribed & dated August 1967 verso
$35,000 - 45,000
PROVENANCE
From the artist’s family
Private Collection, Tauranga
Acquired from Ferner Galleries
Evelyn Page’s life was one of extraordinary zest and independence of spirit. Qualities clearly evident in a body of work created over seven decades. The work illustrated here is a fine example of the artist’s talents and joie de vivre.
In 1966 Page was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council travel grant. She was planning her final journey to Europe and of particular interest was the Bonnard exhibition at Burlington House, London. She later traveled to Salzburg to attend Oskar Kokoschka’s famous summer School of Seeing. Page found the experience challenging but rewarding and felt that she: learned to let the subject impress as simply as possible
At the end of the course Page joined her husband Frederick in Aix-en-Provence to attend the Arts Festival there, and this painting was executed during their stay. Page’s response to the colour and vitality of the summer scene is typically kinesthetic, capturing the carnival atmosphere of the crowded avenue in vibrant tonal harmonies and wonderfully exuberant brushstrokes.
RUSSELL STUART CLARK (1905 - 1966)
Manihera’s Family c.1950 - 51
Oil on canvas 69.2 x 74.6
Signed
$100,000 - 150,000
PROVENANCE
The Sutch - Ovenden Collection, Wellington
EXHIBITED
Canterbury Society of Arts, Durham Street, Christchurch, 1951, No. 46
New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington, 1951, No. 237
Russell Clark 1905 - 1966: A Retrospective Exhibition, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, 1975
National touring exhibition: Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, Aigantighe Art Gallery, Timaru, Bishop Suter, Nelson, Hawkes Bay Art Gallery & Museum, Napier, Gisborne Art Gallery & Museum, Gisborne, National Art Gallery, Wellington, Manawatu Art Gallery, Palmerston North, Sarjeant Art Gallery, Wanganui, Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth, Waikato Museum & Art Gallery, Hamilton, Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland
ILLUSTRATED
Russell Clark, Retrospective Exhibition, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, 1975, p.41
One of the most important artists of his generation, Russell Clark worked first in advertising and as a commercial illustrator while building a reputation nationally as a painter by exhibiting with art societies and mounting solo shows. During World War II he was an Official War Artist in the Pacific. After the war, he had a twenty-year career as a popular lecturer at the Canterbury College School of Art in Christchurch where he had earlier studied from 1922-1927. By the late 1950s he had segued into modern sculpture, creating memorable works such as the anchor stones outside the Bledisloe Building in Auckland. His experimentation in three dimensions was cut short by an early death in 1966 at age 61. Nine years later, a retrospective exhibition of 70 works (including this one) toured to 12 galleries nationally. In the same year, 1975, the New Zealand Library Association established the Russell Clark Award for children’s book illustration in his memory.
The latter commemorative award is due to Clark being not only the illustrator for the New Zealand Listener from when it started in 1939, but also for the School Publications Branch of the Department of Education. In 1949 he was commissioned to illustrate a Primary School Bulletin about life in Ruatāhuna, an isolated settlement in Te Urewera halfway between Rotorua and Wairoa where Māori was still the first language. He described it as fine country. Journeying there from Christchurch, he quickly completed preparatory drawings both for his Bulletin illustrations and later paintings such as this one. A companion piece, Old Keta (1949) depicting a thoughtful kuia seated and smoking a pipe, is now in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa collection.
The subject here is the whānau of kaumātua Dan Paratene Manihera (1886-1966) who brought up his two sons and five daughters on his own after his wife Raha Ere Ruru died in 1940. He is shown as the largest figure, dressed in a blue shirt and brown trousers with braces. In contrast to his children who are all barefoot, he wears shoes. Standing, he stretches out his arms, drawing his disparate whānau together and gesturing towards the wharenui Te Whai-a-te-Motu in the distance. Clark has aligned the house’s gable underneath the dark form of Maungapōhatu, the sacred mountain of Ngāi Tūhoe. It is an engaging image because the figures are pushed towards the viewer in the foreground, with an old tea chest placed behind them, leading the eye towards the whare. This meeting house is illustrated by Clark in the 1950 Primary Schools Bulletin which also includes short stories by two of the children depicted here: A Concert by Hannah Manihera (who would have been 15 years old in 1949), and Potato Planting by Milly Manihera. A narrative is implied; perhaps the figures have paused in their harvesting of potatoes in summer to attend an important event in the meeting house?
The late William Ball Sutch who originally owned this painting, was a great admirer of the artist’s work. In his review of Clark’s Centre Gallery exhibition in Wellington in 1954 he was impressed by how Māori subjects were treated with respect: Here is no sentimentalised tourist view of the Māori. Here certainly is the fun and the animated talk on the marae, but there is also the sombre resignation, the dignity of the women and the social strain put upon the Māori race by the white man’s alleged civilisation. If Russell Clark’s only contribution had been his Māori studies, he would have been known in the history of New Zealand art as the man who gives us eyes to see the Māori.
LINDA TYLER
28
ROBERT ELLIS (1929 - 2021)
Te Rawhiti IV
Oil on board 121 x 120.5
Signed & dated 1974
$60,000 - 80,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Hamilton
Robert Ellis was born in Northampton, England 1929. He studied at Northampton School of Art from 1944 to 1947 and attended the Royal College of Art, London from 1949 to 1952. He came to New Zealand in 1957 to take up a position as Senior Lecturer at Elam School of Fine Arts where he taught from 1957 to 1994.
Before coming to New Zealand Ellis had served in the Royal Air Force as an aerial photographer. This helped forge his individual manner of painting. He evolved an imagery of symbols of cities seen from the air. Ellis did not paint one particular city but generalisations of the relationship between a city and its surroundings. These were created with energy, complexity of colour and a remarkable handling of paint.
Ellis’ expressionist manner of impasto and layered, slashed surfaces are full of vigour and colour. His works were created at a time when motorways were being established and the way they cut through the cityscape was used as a dynamic element in the works.
While Robert Ellis concentrated on motorways and city life during the 1960s, by the 1970s and 1980s his focus shifted to the rural community of his family’s marae at Te Rawhiti in the Bay of Islands. The extraordinary marae with unusual pillars for its porch were captured in a series of works titled Te Rawhiti Te Rawhiti IV is part of a comprehensive series of paintings that make observations about two cultural threads, Māori and Pākehā, from a personal as well as a social perspective. In 1984 Ellis stated: These buildings are of some importance in my life and I was involved in the rehabilitation of this marae over a 20-year period. And I literally spent every vacation for 20 years working on this building and this fact is reflected in my paintings
GRETCHEN ALBRECHT (b. 1943)
Moonlight
Acrylic & oil on two panels of canvas 137 x 213.5
Signed, inscribed & dated 2014 verso
$60,000 - 80,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Hamilton
Acquired from Nadene Milne Gallery, 2016
EXHIBITED
Swimming Into Darkness - New Paintings by Gretchen Albrecht, Nadene Milne Gallery, April 16 - May 7, 2015
After early figurative and expressionist works, Gretchen Albrecht turned to painting still-life compositions, before coming into her own as a robust colourist with a major series of large-scale landscapes in the mid-1970s. A 1971 exhibition by American Colour Field painter, Morris Louis at Auckland Art Gallery, intensified her interest in the psychological and expressive effects of the use of flat areas of colour in painting.
The swirling worlds of luminous colour that define her mature work unfurl in a delicately poetic dance, conveying the power and the beauty of nature with a degree of intimacy that resonates within the viewer.
Solid, rectilinear bands of colour create spatial depth and contrast geometry with gesture - alluding to a conversation between impulse and intent. In her ambition to render the world in terms of its emotional appearance, Albrecht has infused the potency of experience into an aesthetic that is now one of the most widely recognized in New Zealand. Her images often have a stark beauty, but they are not simple. They are aware of history, of art history, as much as they are aware of the world unmediated by art.
30
RALPH HOTERE (1931 - 2013)
Black Painting
Acrylic on canvas 177.5 x 122
Signed, inscribe & dated 1970-71 verso
$140,000 - 180,000
PROVENANCE
Robert May, Dunedin
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
Ralph Hotere (1963-1973), Robert McDougall
Art Gallery, 3 May – 26 May 1974
Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
Everything Hotere touches turns to black, wrote David Eggleton in Ralph Hotere: Black Light (Te Papa Press, 2000) and he went on: all the objects he makes, all the shapes he renders, all the colours he finds are freaked with jet … Hotere makes black provide elegant riddles, fastidious conundrums (p. 62). These remarks apply aptly to Hotere’s Black Painting (1971), a large, imposing and mysterious painting on canvas which because of the extreme subtlety and delicacy of its colouring and texture – difficult to render photographically – needs to be seen in the flesh, so to speak, to be fully perceived and understood. Of course this is true to a degree of any painting, certainly of any painting by Hotere, but is especially so in works like this which depends on such slight variables of lighting and distance and angle of viewing for its subtleties of form, texture and colour to be appreciated.
To provide some context for this unique painting: the title Black Painting first becomes prominent in Hotere’s work in the late 1960s soon after his return from Europe. At first, 1968 paintings of this name employed glossy black lacquer or enamel on hardboard, glass or perspex, buffed to a highly polished surface and with contrasting vertical and horizontal lines of different colours transecting the surface, or, alternatively, narrow, coloured circles to contrast with the reflective, black, immaculate surfaces. In 1969 the year Hotere was the Frances Hodgkins Fellow at The University of Otago, he moved to Dunedin, and changes occur in the Black Paintings series.
Hotere begins using acrylic on canvas as a medium, as in, for example, the 1969 painting in Christchurch Art Gallery in which numerous concentric circles in different colours are inscribed on a matte black surface. In 1970 he introduces words into black-on-black paintings with the extensive Malady series, utilising a poem by Bill Manhire.
This particular painting from 1970-71, inscribed for Robert (that is, Robert May, a Dunedin actor) is a one-off … , belonging with a number of such miscellaneous individual pieces in which he explores variations on his usual motifs and techniques.
Hotere often depends on strong contrasts of colour or form to make his effects – intersecting coloured lines or circles against polished black surfaces, for example, or splashes of white paint against rough corrugated iron. But in this painting strong contrast is almost entirely avoided, with one exception. Close to the top of the painting a thin red line runs horizontally across the surface but stops short of each edge. It serves largely to divide the painting into two zones, both dark-coloured but subtly and recognisably different in tone. At the bottom of the picture two precise dark triangles serve a similar function of dividing the space into areas slightly contrasted in texture and tone.
Within the central zone of the picture, marked off from the rest at top and bottom in the manner described, a large perfect circle is faintly inscribed. Often in Hotere’s paintings such circles (a recurrent motif) stand out clearly, marked by sharp colour contrast, but not here; the rim of the circle is indistinct, not sharply defined, and is observable mainly by the difference in colour and texture between what is inside the circle and what is outside it. Inside, an informal all-over pattern of scribbled short, parallel marks or strokes in a variety of subdued colours – black, brown, purple – is discernible, somewhat reminiscent of kiwi feathers on a cloak, an effect unlike anything I have ever seen on a Hotere painting before. Again, the effect is not emphatic or bold but subtle, restrained and inscrutable, adding to the sombre but appealing enigma of this uniquely remarkable work.
PETER SIMPSON
31
ANDREW MCLEOD (b. 1976)
Large Yellow Green Diptych Oil on canvas 184.5 x 300
Signed & dated 2015
$120,000 - 140,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington
EXHIBITED
Andrew McLeod: New oil paintings, Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington, 23 April - 15 May 2015
Andrew McLeod’s huge diptych, painted in 2015, offers something rather unusual in this day and age – a meticulously rendered faux-medieval scene within a forest at night, but brightly lit so as to render visible every detail of feature and clothing of the richly gowned figures (women and men) and the flowers, swords, sculpted dragons and animals with which the scene is liberally populated. What on earth (or out of it) are we viewing? An apt description of the painting is captured in words by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98), the English pre-Raphaelite painter, one of the probable sources of McLeod’s picture. He once wrote: I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream, of something that never was, never will be – in a light better than any that ever shone – in a land no-one can define or remember, only desire – and the forms divinely beautiful. Every phrase of this comment is relevant to this extraordinary picture.
McLeod, whose career now stretches over about twenty-five years, has never been easy to pin down because his practice is so eclectic and wide-ranging, including paintings, prints, digital images and artist’s books. Even within painting he operates freely across boundaries which many artists choose not to transgress such as that between abstraction and figuration. Nevertheless, pictures such as this which resemble in some ways the ‘costume dramas’ of theatre, movies or television are recurrent in his practice.
McLeod is very much an artist of our time in inhabiting an image-saturated world in which the whole panoply of visual culture from cave drawings to the latest computer-generated images is simultaneously available to him for plunder and usage. He is very knowledgeable about art history and once told an interviewer that the most important aspect of his art education was the Elam art school library (since sadly destroyed) which he consumed avidly book by book and shelf by shelf.
In ransacking art history McLeod is often drawn to currently unfashionable periods and styles, such as nineteenth century British academic painting (Alma-Tadema, Leighton etc.) and the Victorian pre-Raphaelite movement in particular. A specialist could no doubt identify sources for some if not all of the figures in the diptych in works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones or other members of the ‘brotherhood’. This practice of copying from prior paintings should not be confused with vulgar plagiarism but is more akin to musical ‘sampling’, a practice wide-spread in hip-hop and other contemporary music. I suspect the visual sources here also include various Renaissance models. For example, the facial profiles of the dozen or so figures in the diptych are reminiscent of the chiselled profiles in Giotto’s frescoes.
Each panel of the diptych depicts a commanding sumptuously green-gowned figure (female on the left, male on the right), whom other elaborately costumed figures venerate (one perched in a tree with flowers in her lap, another with arms outstretched garbed and veiled in black) in attitudes of ceremonial adoration, prayer, obeisance, supplication and the like. Two figures are transected by the division between the panels making the image continuous across the division. This unity is also enhanced by an ambiguous horizontal structure in mid-picture on which lilies and other items are scattered as if on an animal pelt. Various individual objects –an animal head in the top right corner, a sunflower in bloom, a hovering sword – are prominent though to what precise end, beyond contributing to the romantic quasi-Arthurian atmosphere, is anybody’s guess. Pre-Raphaelitism embodied a medievalising nostalgia implicitly designed to efface the horrors of industrial England; McLeod’s antipodean postmodern channelling of the movement is a further exhilarating escape into the aesthetics of pure style.
PETER SIMPSON
CHARLES GOLDIE
Throughout his lifetime and beyond Charles Frederick Goldie greatly influenced our nation’s artistic and cultural consciousness. Born in Auckland on 20 October 1870, one of eight children from the marriage of Maria Partington and David Goldie, he was named after his maternal grandfather, Charles Frederick Partington, builder of the landmark Auckland windmill.
In 1883, the young Goldie was enrolled at Auckland Grammar School. His youthful artistic talents shone and it was not long before he was winning prizes at the Auckland Society of Arts. On leaving school, Louis John Steele became his mentor and tutor. Two of the young artist’s still life paintings so impressed Sir George Grey that he convinced David Goldie to allow his 22-year-old son to attend the Académie Julian in Paris. Goldie spent over four years at the Académie Julian tutored by leading lights of the Paris Salon, such as artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
In 1898, fully informed in the French academic style, Goldie returned to New Zealand and began collaborating with his former tutor Louis John Steele. The two worked on a number of paintings including Arrival of the Māori in New Zealand, a large scale historically-themed painting after Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa. Before long, the relationship deteriorated, likely caused by tensions around the former student’s growing success. Goldie went on to open his own studio, quickly establishing himself as a successful portraitist of Māori.
A visit to Rotorua in 1901, was the first of several field trips during which the artist was introduced to local Māori and persuaded them to sit for portraits. Goldie’s works from this point forward strongly reflect the European tradition in which he was trained, and possess a stunning power and visual clarity. On the one hand, his remarkable dedication to realism belies an ethnographic interest, at the same time he was also striving to capture the mana of his sitters who
included chiefs, tohunga and kaumatua. Goldie formed long-standing relationships with several Māori he met and painted around this period, including Wiremu Pātara Te Tuhi and Te Aho-o-te-rangi Wharepu (Ngāti Mahuta), Ina te Papatahi (Ngāpuhi), and Wharekauri Tahuna (Ngāti Manawa).
Over the next two decades, Goldie gained national and international acclaim and steady demand formed a strong market for his portraits. A number of these would later be exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, in London, and the Paris Salon, throughout the 1930s.
In 1920, the artist moved to Sydney, where despite original plans to continue on to Paris, was married at age 50 to 35-yearold old Olive Cooper. Marriage in Sydney circumvented the Goldie family disapproval of the relationship between Auckland’s most famous artist, and the milliner from Karangahape Road. After two years in Sydney, apparently disillusioned with his work at this time and suffering from health problems, Charles and Olive returned to New Zealand.
Goldie’s return to Auckland, in 1924, ultimately represented a moment of artistic reckoning. Goldie received encouragement to resume painting from Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe. Devoting himself once again to his work he began to apply a more liberal, impressionistic approach to the realisation of his portraits and returned to painting a number of his former subjects. Works from this later period are distinguished by their soft luminescence, offering a rhythmic departure and disconnection from the rigours of formalism, which he had so strictly adhered to in the past.
Goldie died in Auckland in 1947, his exquisite, spirituallycharged, often unsettling and ever powerful portraits of Māori having made an unsurpassed contribution to the history of art in New Zealand.
32
CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE (1870 -
1947)
Thoughts of a Tohunga: Wharekauri Tahuna a Chieftain of the Tūhoe Tribe, 1938 Oil on canvas 76.5 x 61.2
Signed & dated with brushpoint, bottom right
C.F. Goldie N.Z. 1938
$2,500,000 - 3,500,000
PROVENANCE
Exhibited Paris Salon, 1939
John Leech Gallery, c. 1953
Barrington Gallery, Exhibition of Historical Paintings, 28 - 31 May 1975
International Art Centre, National Treasures, Wednesday, 24 March 1993
Private Collection, New Zealand
EXHIBITED
Exhibited Paris Salon, 1939
GOLDIE, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki , 28 June - 28 October 1997
GOLDIE, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, 12 December 1998 - 7 March 1999
ILLUSTRATED
N.Z. Herald, 10 February 1938, p.8, reproduced in black and white
N.Z. Herald, 9 May 1939
Newrick, H.P. N.Z. Art Auction Records, 19691972 Wellington, Newrick Associates Ltd, 1973, N.Z. Herald, 21 May 1975, reproduced in black and white,
Barrington Gallery Catalogue, 28 - 31 May 1975, reproduced in black and white
N.Z. Herald, 29 May 1975, Section I, p.2
Dominion, 29 May 1975
International Art Centre, National Treasures, Wednesday 24 March, 1993
C. F. Goldie, 1870-1947: His Life & Painting, Alister Taylor and Jan Glenn, A. Taylor, Martinborough, New Zealand 1977, p.120, p.282
GOLDIE, Roger Blackley, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in association with David Bateman Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand 1997, p.166
Jacquie Clarke, New Zealand Geographic, 1998,
C.F. Goldie: the old master revisited, (38)
THOUGHTS OF A TOHUNGA
Charles Goldie’s 1938 portrait of Wharekauri Tahuna is nothing short of an artistic tour de force. In his execution of this work, Goldie deployed the technical finesse which he had perfected over the course of an entire career to maximum effect, allowing him to powerfully express the likeness and mana of Wharekauri Tahuna.
The present work is a sensitive and reverent rendering of Wharekauri Tahuna, comprising careful yet spirited, visible brushstrokes. It has been composed with such precision as to avoid obscuring the finer detail of the sitter’s visage, but is also expressive enough in its painted manner to enhance the effect of the work’s ambient light interplay; illumination is derived from a strong singular light source coming from the left of the painting. This mastery of light and texture renders the portrait lifelike: from the resplendence of Wharekauri’s pounamu to the weave of his garment and tender realism of deep-etched lines. Frontwards-facing and dominating the canvas, Wharekauri’s strength and mana are asserted by the work’s composition. The enduring impression left on the viewer is of how impressive and majestic the aged Wharekauri is. His literal and metaphorical largesse extends well beyond the confines of the frame. The work is further enhanced by the ‘Goldie’ frame in which the painting is presented, a design originated by Goldie’s father.
The portrait epitomises all the formal qualities characteristic of the later period of Goldie’s artistic production. This mature period in his work had been preceded by more than a decade of inactivity, during which time he moved to Sydney, was married and remained there for two years. Goldie’s eventual resumption of painting in the early 1930s (by which time he had returned to New Zealand) saw a radical shift in his expressive technique. The crisp luminosity and inclination to academic formalism which had defined his earlier works, was replaced by a much freer treatment of the painted surface.
Goldie’s increasingly experimental forays into a more dynamic use of oil paint had led him to fully master the subtleties of a new and eloquent visual language. This instilled his works with a deeper sense of gravitas and atmosphere, as beautifully displayed in this portrait of Wharekauri.
Wharekauri Tahuna was a tohunga, or priest, from Galatea and of Ngāti Manawa. Thought to have been the last man in the Ureweras to bear full-face moko, he was one of Goldie’s favoured subjects and features in a number of notable works completed by the artist throughout his career.
In 1933, Goldie completed a portrait of Wharekauri titled, Thoughts of a Tohunga, Wharekauri Tahuna [Te Wharekauri Tahuna, Ngāti Manawa], now a prized painting in the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa. An earlier portrait had been completed in 1910, as well as a splendid 1914 work, Te Wharekauri Tahuna, now residing in the collection of Auckland War Memorial Museum. These ultimately speak to the value which Goldie invested in his relationships with sitters.
Goldie’s portraits of Māori are celebrated for their ability to realistically capture the mana and likeness of his sitters. This immortalised image of Wharekauri Tahuna embodies both the mana of the sitter and the skill of CF Goldie. There is a spirit of vitality and vivacity to this work which makes it truly special, and distinguishes it as a work of ancestral and spiritual importance, a precious link to our past. With this in mind, the presentation of this exceptional portrait to the market is, to say the least, a rare and exciting occurrence.
33
CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE (1870 - 1947)
Portrait of Tumai Tawhiti, Chieftain of the Ngāti Iwi
Ngāti Te Akau
Oil on canvas 35.5 x 30.5
Signed & dated 1932 with brushpoint, top left Inscribed in pencil on stretcher in the artist’s hand The last of the Cannibals, Tumai Tawhiti
$500,000 - 750,000
PROVENANCE
Leonard Joel, Australian Paintings, 16/11/1972, Lot 506
Webb’s, Fine New Zealand & Foreign Paintings and Prints, 18/12/1996, Lot No. 60
Private Collection, New Zealand
Tumai Tawhiti (Ngāti Raukawa, Te Arawa) was born in 1812 in the Bay of Plenty. As a warrior he was fully tattooed by the time he was 24-years-old.
Goldie first painted Tumai Tawhiti in 1911, and again in 1913, titling this work Last of the Cannibals. He repeated the subject again in 1932, 1935 and 1938 (all of these works are currently in private collections).
The present work, completed in 1932, is a sensitive and reverent rendering of Tumai Tawhiti, comprising careful yet spirited, visible brushstrokes. The subject is portrayed in profile, set against a soft gold, harmonising background.
Goldie’s portraits of Māori are celebrated for their ability to realistically capture the mana and likeness of his sitters. Writing on the 1918 exhibition of the Auckland Society of Arts, the reviewer for the New Zealand Herald (31 May 1918) observed: Mr. Goldie’s work consists of small portraits, finished with his characteristic perfection of detail, and splendidly typical of the Māori, in whom he finds such constant inspiration.
CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE (1870 - 1947)
Paris, 1896
Oil on board 15 x 23
Signed, inscribed & dated 25/4/96
$60,000 - 80,000
PROVENANCE
Webb’s, Important Works of Art, 07/08/2019, Lot No. 45
Private Collection, Auckland Thence by descent
Goldie joined one of the principal Parisian art schools, the Académie Julian, where he studied under eminent salon and academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (18251905) and French orientalist Gabriel-Joseph-Marie-Augustin Ferrier (1847 - 1914). The Académie was a private art school for painting and sculpture. The talented young expatriate took lodgings in the artistic hub of Montparnasse, the heart of the artists’ quarter.
Whilst abroad, young Goldie kept his Auckland benefactors appraised of his progress in Paris. The works he sent for the Auckland Society of Arts 1894 exhibition, were awarded a silver medal. The scene depicted was painted overlooking the Pont Royal and the Louvre Museum on the riverbank of the Seine.
35
GOTTFRIED LINDAUER (1839 - 1926)
Māori Chief, Possibly Te Mahuki Oil on canvas 67 x 54
Signed & dated 1907
$500,000 - 750,000
PROVENANCE
Webb’s, Fine New Zealand & Foreign Paintings, 03/04/2001, Lot No.43
Private Collection, New Zealand
Gottfried Lindauer, along with Charles Goldie, is the bestknown painter of Māori subjects from the late nineteenthearly twentieth centuries. Born in Pilsen, Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he trained professionally at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, emigrating to New Zealand in 1874.
Lindauer’s first portraits of Māori were painted in Nelson. A move to Auckland in the mid 1870s proved crucial, there he met businessman, Henry Partridge (1848-1931). Over the next 30 years, Partridge commissioned Lindauer to paint numerous portraits of eminent Māori, as well as large-scale depictions of traditional Māori life. Lindauer travelled extensively throughout New Zealand living in a variety of locations besides Nelson and Auckland, notably Christchurch, Napier - where he was closely associated with the photographer Samuel Carnell (1832-1920) and finally, from 1889, Woodville.
In 1886, Lindauer attended the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, where 12 of his Māori portraits were exhibited. The commissioner of the New Zealand pavilion was Walter Buller (1838-1906). Lindauer and his family lived in Europe, mainly Germany from 1900 to 1902, and again from 1911 to 1914, with short visits to Bohemia. During this time several of his Māori portraits were placed in public and private collections there.
Henry Partridge opened a gallery in Queen Street, Auckland, in 1901, which initially featured 40 of Lindauer’s Māori portraits. By the time Partridge gifted his Lindauer collection to the Auckland Art Gallery in 1915, there were 62 portraits. The historian, James Cowan (1870-1943) wrote a descriptive catalogue of the collection describing it as unrivalled in the world. Lindauer’s contribution and legacy to the history of art in New Zealand is considerable and highly valued.
36
PETER STICHBURY (b. 1969)
Edward Krebs
Acrylic on linen 100 x 80
Signed, inscribed & dated 2012 verso
$75,000 - 95,000
PROVENANCE
Tracy Williams Ltd, New York
Private Collection, Auckland
In an article published in American online arts magazine
Hyperallergic, critic John Yau wrote of Stichbury’s work: Peter Stichbury is a portrait painter whose work is unlike anyone else that I know of, and I am only stating the obvious
Along with Ingres, Stichbury belongs to a group of linear portrait painters that includes Christian Schad, Tamara de Lempicka and early Lucien Freud, particularly Girl in Bed (1952), which is of his then wife, Lady Caroline Blackwood, who was known for her astonishingly large blue eyes.
The longer you look at Stichbury’s paintings, the stranger they become. It is almost as if the figures in them have become too perfect, too manicured, too controlled.
As viewers, we might have occasion to remember that this control is an illusion, that dissipation and entropy are unavoidable. Stichbury’s fascination with the world of selfrepresentation in the age of digital media goes far beyond the surface - it is a meditation on the lengths to which we will go to avoid being human and aging, and how deeply human such attempts make us.
In 1987 Peter Stichbury graduated from Elam School of Fine Art and won the James Wallace Art Award. Gathering ideas from magazines, the internet, popular culture and his childhood, the artist continues to develop a body of work exploring, interpreting and reflecting upon the nature of identity. Contrary to common opinion, Stichbury’s stunning paintings, art prints and sketches of gorgeous waifs, nerdy yet strangely cool boys or professors aren’t merely the musings of an artist obsessed with surface aesthetics. Whilst fascinated by appearances, his interest cuts deeper and a little darker.
Stichbury’s talent lies in making beautiful people look interesting and interesting people look beautiful and it’s proving lucrative, at least for the collectors. Furthermore, the American market is taking notice, a fact reinforced by several appearances of his work at the influential annual ArtLA Fair and the burgeoning fanfare enjoyed through his NYC dealer, to the point where new works are rarely available in his home country.
37 TONY FOMISON (1939 - 90)
Lady McBeth
Oil on canvas board
40.5 x 32.5
Signed, inscribed & dated 15.1.88 verso
$50,000 - 75,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Beatrice Grossman, 1988
LITERATURE
Ian Wedde [ed.], Fomison - What Shall We Tell Them?, City Gallery, Wellington, 1994, Supplementary Catalogue, p.167
By 1988 when this work was made, Fomison’s health was deteriorating, necessitating hospitalisations. Despite this he worked steadily towards a solo exhibition at Gow Langsford Gallery which opened in July 1989. It would be his last. The NZ Herald reviewer commented that the paintings were small and featured tormented and melodramatic subjects. He pointed out the literary references evident such as a portrayal of King Lear, who in Shakespeare’s play becomes homeless, destitute and insane before dying. Well-versed in Shakespearean literature, Fomison had previously painted Shylock in 1986 and the bard himself as a clown in 1980.
This painting features one of the main characters from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, a tragedy in five acts, which was written in 1606-7. He based the story on the real Macbeth who took the throne in 1040, after killing his cousin King Duncan I in a battle near Elgin in the Moray district of Scotland. In the play, the ambitious Lady Macbeth exhorts her husband to commit murder but is then driven mad by guilt and kills herself. In Fomison’s painting only the faintest traces of pink on the cheek and neck relieve the pallor of stricken Lady Macbeth. Figures in his paintings often appear as if rubbed into the canvas, and his restricted palette makes the works resemble the grisaille (grey paintings) of historical European painters. Lady Macbeth’s anguish is accentuated not only by her bent posture with arms hugged tight across her torso but also the dark slash of her open mouth, and the heavy lines which demarcate the shape of her white-gowned figure. She is regarded solemnly from the bed by one of the medieval homunculus figures that make frequent appearances in Fomison’s work.
Curator and writer Ian Wedde has suggested that Fomison had an enduring interest in depicting sinister and deadly women such as Cleopatra and sphinxes with devouring mouths, which culminated in his portrayal of Hine-Nui-TePo luring Maui to his death. Wedde points to the 1979 book by Patrick Bade on fin-de-siecle femme fatales in Fomison’s library as a source. Yet consider how the little creature observing Lady Macbeth behaves less as a demon familiar to a witch, than as a sombre witness to her descent into madness and suicide. Fomison’s paintings often remind us of historical recurrences, as well as the need for empathy.
LINDA TYLER
38 TONY FOMISON (1939 - 90)
Self Portrait
Oil on cloth on board 43 x 49.5
Signed & dated 1976 lower right
$120,000 - 140,000
PROVENANCE
Collection of Mary Fomison, Christchurch, gifted by the artist, c.1975
Webb’s, Works of Art, 09/08/2021, Lot No. 56
Private Collection, Auckland
ILLUSTRATED
Ian Wedde (editor), Fomison: What shall we tell them?, City Gallery, Wellington, 1994, p.101
EXHIBITED
Tony Fomison: What Shall we Tell Them?, City Gallery, Wellington, 13 February - 22 May 1994
Tony Fomison (1939-1990) and Philip Clairmont (1949-1984) pictured together in the living room of fellow artist, Allen Maddox (1948 -2000).
Marti Friedlander, Tony Fomison / Philip Clairmont, photograph, 50.4 x 40.4 cm. Image courtesy the Gerrard and Marti Friedlander Charitable Trust
39 PHILIP CLAIRMONT (1949 - 84)
Couch Diptych
Oil on hessian laid on panel 96 x 185.4
Signed & dated 77 lower left; left panel
Signed & dated November 1977 lower right
$80,000 - 120,000
PROVENANCE
Elva Bett Gallery, Wellington
Rachael Power Collection
Acquired directly from the artist 1977
Rosemary McLeod Collection
Webb’s, Fine New Zealand & Foreign Paintings, 03/04/2001, Lot No. 38
Private Collection, Auckland
ILLUSTRATED
Art New Zealand (52), Spring 1989
Philip Clairmont was celebrated from the late 1970s as one New Zealand’s leading figurative colourist and neoexpressionist artists. Created in the last decade of Clairmont’s life, Couch Diptych (previously titled Mao Diptych), embodies many key elements associated with the artist’s work. The painting is one of the first examples of a Clairmont Corner Painting - a diptych displayed across the two sides of a room corner. Giving the work a diagonal element that draws the viewer in.
A pupil of Rudolf Gopas, Clairmont’s work was influenced by van Gogh, Francis Bacon and his contemporaries, Allen Maddox and Tony Fomison. His complex compositions appear spontaneous but there is more to them than meets the eye. Using strong colours and distorted forms, often choosing an arrangement of domestic objects and interiors as subject matter, his work is unique and readily identifiable.
The painting illustrated most enchanting quality is its luminosity. Clairmont valued the gesturality of painting, giving an incredible force of energy to his work.
40 BANKSY (British b. 1974)
Love is in the Air, 2004
Screenprint on wove paper, edition 115/500, 50 x 70
Unsigned (Signed in plate)
$100,000 - 150,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
ILLUSTRATED
Wall and Piece, Banksy, (Vintage Publishing
United Kingdom, 2005)
NOTES
Accompanied by certificate of authenticity from Pest Control, signed & dated 28/10/08
41 BANKSY (British b. 1974)
Have A Nice Day, 2003
Screenprint, edition 432/500, 34 x 98.7
Unsigned, inscribed Have A Nice Day in plate
$30,000 - 40,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
NOTES
Accompanied by certificate of authenticity from Pest Control, signed & dated 09/05/2021
Active since the 1990s Banksy’s satirical street art combines perceptive social commentary with a degree of dark humor. The viewer is often simultaneously challenged and amused by the unexpected appearance of Banksy’s distinctive, finely stencilled graffiti on walls, streets and bridges.
Love Is In The Air, also known as Flower Thrower first appeared in 2003 as large format, stencilled graffiti in Jerusalem shortly after the construction of the West Bank Wall. It was graffitied on the wall separating Palestine from Israel. The wall rapidly became a giant canvas for paintings and writings protesting against its construction. Banksy returned to the region in 2005 to paint a series of nine provocative works supporting freedom and equality.
In 2015 he contributed again, painting four new pieces amongst the ruins of a bombed city with the intention of highlighting the plight of those living in the Gaza Strip. In Banksy’s iconic and characteristic signature stencilled style, Love Is In The Air depicts a protestor wearing a baseball cap and a bandana to mask the lower half of his face. The artist adds an inevitable twist, placing a bunch of flowers into the thrower’s hand instead of a molotov cocktail or grenade. Despite what appears to be anger and frustration in the subjects pose, he prepares to launch a universal symbol of love and peace as opposed to a weapon.
Love Is In The Air is one of Banksy’s most iconic and sought after works. It has been reproduced on posters, phone covers, T-shirts and other merchandise all over the world. The image also features across the cover of the 2005 publication Wall and Piece, Banksy. Although completed in 2003, this image with it’s masked subject possesses a powerful relevance.
Also included in the sale and illustrated here is Banksy’s iconic work, Have a Nice Day. In one of the first ever screenprints released by Banksy, the artist portrays law enforcement in a bold and striking way. Twenty seven military or riot police are depicted in a single, intimidating line. In the centre of the group is a grey and black heavily armored combat vehicle, underneath which the words Have A Nice Day are written.
The police are kitted out in black riot gear, marching in unison against an unseen threat or in fact towards the viewer. The faces of the police, which in reality would be covered with protective visors, are covered with bright yellow acid-house style smiley faces; a motif we see fairly regularly in Banksy prints, particularly when it comes to portraying figures that use fear as a means of control.
Whether or not Banksy intended Have a Nice Day to intimidate or amuse, the artwork certainly speaks both to the idea that the police force were not all they seemed, perhaps even hiding behind their smiles.
42
TREVOR MOFFITT (1936 - 2006)
Delivering to the Gold Fields
Oil on board 50.5 x 59
Signed & dated 1979
Title inscribed verso
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wellington
Simplicity was a distinctive feature of Trevor Moffitt’s art along with his trademark impasto application of paint and solid, tonally modelled forms. Through his art Moffitt celebrated New Zealand folklore, immortalising events and participants in a way that no other artist has.
During the 1950s Moffitt attended the University of Canterbury School of Fine Art and was taught by Canterbury artists Bill Sutton and Russell Clark who were searching for an identifiable New Zealand style. Moffitt had his first solo exhibition, a show of Southland landscape paintings at the Invercargill Public Art Gallery in April 1960. In 1962 he commenced his Gold Miner series, based on his childhood experience of gold miners in Waikaia.
Often confrontational in its honesty, Moffitt’s boldly direct expressionist style was considered almost primitive this leading to slow recognition of his works. Included in sale are four extraordinary works by the artist. Two of which are from Moffitt’s Stanley Graham series from 1986 to 1987. During this period he produced 51 paintings, roughly a chronological description of Graham’s life leading to the infamous shootings and manhunt.
This series is in part a commentary on a time when mental health was neglected and men were encourage to ‘bottle things up’. Moffitt commented: The lessons of the man [i.e. Graham] are still to be learnt - that a lack of communication leads to violence in society
The Stanley Graham series was exhibited at the Louise Beale Gallery in 1987. Moffitt sent up thirty works, four priced at $3,000 and the rest at $1,500, although six of these had already been pre-sold by the artist.
In the 1988 Winter edition of Art New Zealand Penny Orme wrote an article on Trevor Moffitt. While illustrated with images from the latest Stanley Graham series she also referenced the series Mackenzie, My Father’s Life, and Artist as a Solo Father to highlight that; In depicting the courses of these lives, Moffitt manifests his concern for the human condition.
43
TREVOR MOFFITT (1936 - 2006)
Sharpening the Axe Oil on board 75 x 59
Signed, inscribed & dated 1980 verso
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Hamilton
44
TREVOR MOFFITT (1936 - 2006)
The School Teacher Evelyn Gibson Arrives, 8th Oct 1941, From the Stanley Graham Series, No 8 Oil on board 58 x 58
Signed & dated 1987
$20,000 - 25,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
Trevor Moffitt: Stanley Graham Series, Louise Beale Gallery, Wellington, 2 – 20 November 1987
45 TREVOR MOFFITT (1936 - 2006)
George S. Ridley Attempts to Disarm Graham, 8th Oct 1941, From the Stanley Graham Series, 13 Oil on board 58 x 58
Signed & dated 1987
$20,000 - 25,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
Trevor Moffitt: Stanley Graham Series, Louise Beale Gallery, Wellington, 2 – 20 November 1987
46 COLIN MCCAHON (1919 - 1987)
Flower for Brenda
Pastel and watercolour on paper 57 x 44.5
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Dr Robert May, Perth, Western Australia
47 COLIN MCCAHON (1919 - 1987)
Landscape from Woollaston’s Mapua
Ink on paper 24.5 x 20.5
Signed, inscribed & dated 1943
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Hamilton McCahon Database Record: cm001859
48 ALLEN
Untitled
(1948 - 2000)
Oil on canvas 69.5 x 64.5
Signed verso
$10,000 - 15,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
49 RALPH HOTERE (1931 - 2013)
Drawing for Bicentennial Painting
Watercolour and graphite on paper 42 x 34
Signed & title inscribed
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Hastings
MADDOX
50
TEUANE TIBBO (1895 - 1984)
The Grave of Robert Louis Stevenson
Acrylic on canvas board 61 x 76.5
Signed, inscribed & dated 1973 verso
$12,000 - $18,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Thence by descent from the artist
51 TEUANE TIBBO (1895 - 1984)
Raised Flowers in a Pot
Acrylic on canvas board 60 x 50
Signed
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Thence by descent from the artist
52 TEUANE TIBBO (1895 - 1984)
Preparing the Feast Oil on board 59 x 89.5
Signed & dated 1965
$20,000 - 25,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Teuane Tibbo is best known for her colourful depictions of everyday life from her childhood in Samoa. Born in 1895 in Pago Pago, Samoa, she later lived in Fiji as an adult before moving to Auckland in 1945.
Tibbo began painting in the 1960s without any formal training. Pat Hanly introduced Tibbo to Barry Lett, who became her dealer and exhibited her works at Barry Lett Galleries. Her first solo exhibition opened in 1964.
Her work is held in the permanent collections of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, The University of Auckland and the National Gallery of Australia.
53 RALPH HOTERE (1931 - 2013)
Drawing for Requiem
Watercolour 51 x 70 cm
Signed & title inscribed
$18,000 -26,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Nelson
Acquired from Catchment Gallery, Nelson, 2006
54 JACQUELINE FAHEY (b. 1929)
K’ Road Cartoon
Acrylic on board 107 x 50
Signed & dated 1998
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland Webb’s, Works of Art, 09/08/2021, Lot No. 93
Art+Object, Contemporary Art & Objects, 03/04/2008, Lot No. 23
Study No 1.
Mixed media on paper 72.5 x 72.5
Inscribed & dated 1973 on artist label affixed verso
$7,000 - 10,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Petar/James Gallery, Auckland
55 GEOFF THORNLEY (b. 1942)
Triangle
Acrylic
Signed, inscribed & 1973 verso
$12,000 - 15,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland, 1973
56 ROY GOOD (b.1945)
Suite - Diagonal II
on canvas 138 x 138
57 TOSS WOOLLASTON (1910 - 98)
Untitled Oil on board 59.5 x 79.5
Signed
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
The Sutch - Ovenden Collection, Wellington
58 ALAIN GAZIER (French b.1956)
Entrée du Palais (Palace Entrance) Oil on canvas, 92 x 73
Signed
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
59 FELIX KELLY (1914 - 94)
3604 Spring Hill Avenue
Oil on masonite panel 89.5 x 135
Signed & dated 1967
Inscribed Painted for Mr & Mrs Nicholas McGowin, Mobile Alabama USA, by Felix Kelly, London 1967 verso
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, USA
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
Felix Kelly: A Romantic Realist, The R.W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, LA, Apr. 16 – May 14, 1972
Felix Kelly is one of New Zealand’s most interesting expatriate artists. Born in Epsom in 1914 he claimed to be two years younger most of his adult life. Kelly studied briefly, and even seems to have taught drafting at Elam School of Fine Art. He was only 21 when he left New Zealand in 1935. He never returned.
In London Kelly continued his New Zealand occupation of graphic design, working for Lintas, the advertising wing of Unilevers. He also freelanced as an illustrator and cartoonist, especially for Lilliput. His cartoons are not unlike those of the slightly younger Ronald Searle. After the war and the RAF, the focus of his graphic art shifted to book illustration, dust-jacket design and contributions on interior decoration to such fashion magazines as Ideal Home and Harper’s Bazaar. In the 1950s and 60s he was acknowledged as one of England’s top designers for the theatre, working with the likes of Sir John Gielgud and Dame Sybil Thorndike.
Kelly’s ambition had always been to succeed as a painter. Emerging in the context of Surrealism and British NeoRomanticism, he exhibited alongside significant British artists such as Lucian Freud, John Piper and fellow New Zealander Frances Hodgkins. Kelly attracted the attention of the prominent critic and writer, Herbert Read. Kelly’s paintings are characterised by his interest in a world forgotten by progress, great houses falling into dilapidation, windblasted trees, abandoned locomotives often invested with an eerie watchfulness.
Kelly’s knowledge of architecture led to his involvement in house design, most notably his collaboration on the redesign of Highgrove for the Prince of Wales. His most celebrated project was, however, the mural cycle at Castle Howard associated with the filming of Brideshead Revisited in the 1980s. Kelly travelled a great deal. Paintings of Spain and Italy in the 1940s were followed by West African scenes in the 50s and ante-bellum houses in America’s Deep South in the 60s and 70s.
3604 Spring Hill Avenue of Mobile, Alabama is a masterwork of the artist’s southern scenes with a classic moss-draped oak, inviting lawn chairs and abundant foliage. Trips to Russia, Thailand, India and Egypt in the 70s and 80s each led to an exhibition of exotic paintings.
In late career, Kelly would execute a small sketch characterised by loose brush-work, which would then be converted into a carefully executed large-scale paintings. Both types of work appear for sale from time to time.
A comprehensive exhibition of his earlier work, curated by Douglas Lloyd Jenkins and mounted by the Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery, toured several New Zealand centres in 2008-09. Dr Donald Bassett’s book Fix; The Art and Life of Felix Kelly was first published in 2007 and a second edition in 2013.
60 CHARLES BLOMFIELD (1848 - 1926)
White Terraces
Oil on canvas 42 x 58
Signed & dated 1883
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Charles Blomfield has long been recognised as the most popular early New Zealand painter of the Pink and White Terraces. Blomfield first saw the Terraces during a camping trip in December 1875, and commented that they were exceedingly beautiful and graceful. Returning in 1885 he spent six weeks documenting the Terraces and surrounding landscape in a series of oil paintings. It was reported that by September 1885 orders for paintings had been received and completed from throughout Europe, America, Australia and other places.
Separated by nearly a kilometre, the Pink Terraces were about two thirds of the way down the lake, sheltered from the harsh sun on the western shores, facing south-east. Their pink appearance was largely due to less exposure to sunlight, and therefore less bleaching. Tourists and locals bathed in the luke warm water on the lower level of the Pink Terraces. Early on the morning of 10 June 1886, Mount Tarawera erupted, burying the terraces.
Blomfield was heartbroken and decided to see the devastation for himself. He returned to the area in October and painted several scenes of the terrible destruction. A world away, fourteen of his Rotomahana paintings were on display in South Kensington, London at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition. This major exhibition strengthening the bonds of the British Empire and was opened by Queen Victoria, recording a record 5.5 million visitors. Blomfield realised that the paintings he had made of the Terraces were a valuable record, and declined to sell them. He went on to paint and sell scale copies of these works. The prices soon trebled in value.
After 1886 Blomfield continued to travel throughout New Zealand painting pictures of mountains, rivers, lakes and cloud effects, but his greatest love remained the native bush, of which he wrote enthusiastically in his diary. Charles Blomfield died in Auckland in 1926.
61 FRANCES HODGKINS (1869 - 1947)
A Cornish Road
Watercolour 34.5 x 24.5
Signed & dated 1903
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
The Sutch - Ovenden Collection, Wellington
Complete Frances Hodgkins Catalogue No. FH0382
LITERATURE
E H McCormick, Works of Frances Hodgkins in New Zealand, Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland 1954, p.172
62 FRANCES HODGKINS (1869 - 1947)
An Old Age Pensioner
Watercolour 40 x 30
Signed & dated 1900
$28,000 - 38,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Complete Frances Hodgkins Catalogue No. FH0310
EXHIBITED
Canterbury Society of Arts, 20th Annual Exhibition, 1900
63 SYDNEY LOUGH THOMPSON (1877 - 1973)
Waiting for the Catch Oil on canvas 37 x 44.5
Signed
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Scotland
64 SYDNEY LOUGH THOMPSON (1877 - 1973)
Le Ravin, Tourettes, No.1 Oil on canvas 61 x 50
Signed
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from International Art Centre, Important & Rare Art, 11/08/2020, Lot No. 61
PROVENANCE Private Collection, Auckland
Signed
$8,000 - 12,000
65 VERA CUMMINGS (1891- 1949)
Māori Chief Oil on board 34 x 24.5
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Signed
$8,000 - 12,000
66 VERA CUMMINGS (1891- 1949)
Sophia Oil on board 34 x 24.5
67
ARTIST UNKNOWN
Ngatimara Tribe, Hauraki Gulf 1847
Watercolour 22 x 18
Signed
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Prague
68
CHARLES TOLE (1903 - 88)
A Map of Auckland Province
Watercolour 50 x 50
Signed & dated 1945
$6,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, 1989
Art+Object, The Tim & Sherrah Francis Collection, Day 1, 07/09/2016, Lot No. 102
Private Collection, Auckland
69
CHARLES DECIMUS BARRAUD (1822 - 1897)
Lake Wanaka from above Beacon Point
Watercolour 25.5 x 76.7
Signed & dated 1876
$12,000 - 18,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Cambridge
70
CHARLES DECIMUS BARRAUD (1822 - 1897)
Mount Egmont from Urenui
Watercolour 35 x 43.5
Signed & dated 1892
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Kerikeri
71 PETRUS VAN DER VELDEN (1837 - 1913)
Landscape
Oil on board 26.5 x 40
Certificate of Authenticity affixed verso, signed by artist’s daughter
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Cambridge
72 PETRUS VAN DER VELDEN (1837 - 1913)
Spirit of Music
Watercolour 25 x 35.5
Certificate of Authenticity affixed verso, signed by artist’s daughter
$2,500 - 4,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wellington
Acquired from International Art Centre, Contemporary & Traditional New Zealand & European Art, 09/07/1999, Lot No. 65
73 JAMES MCLAUCHLAN NAIRN (1859 - 1904)
Fifeshire Rock, Nelson Harbour
Watercolour 25.5 x 35.5
Signed, inscribed & dated 04
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wellington
Acquired from International Art Centre, Important, Early & Rare New Zealand Art, 28/07/2009, Lot No. 62
Signed, inscribed & dated 2007 verso
$6,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Signed $1,000 - 2,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
74 PAMELA WOLFE (b. 1950) Still Life Oil on canvas 150.2 x 95.2
75 ZARAHN SOUTHON (b. 1975)
Rangatahi Oil on linen 20 x 20
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Hamilton
Acquired from the artist
Signed & dated 2021 verso
$6,000 - 8,000
76 FATU FEU’U (b. 1946)
Alofa Moni Oil on canvas 101.5 x 76
Signed
$6,000 - 9,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
77 ANDY LELEISI’UAO (b. 1969)
Untitled, 2009
Acrylic on canvas 121 x 91
78 RAYMOND CHING (b. 1939)
A Terrible Event over the Mallee (The Rooster that thought it was a Magpie)
From The Birds of Black Thursday Part 3 Oil on linen 99 x 119.4
Signed & dated 1997
$14,000 - 18,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, London
Acquired from Tryon Gallery, London, 1997
79 ALVIN PANKHURST (1949 - 2024)
Hinematiora, A Chieftainess of the Ngāti Porou Tribe, Whangara Near Gisborne Acrylic on canvas 55 x 84
Signed & dated 2008
$15,000 - 25,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wellington
Acquired from the artist
80 JUSTIN BOROUGHS (b. 1952)
Boatshed near Porirua, Pāuatahanui Oil on board 42 x 71.5
Signed
$5,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
82
Music Oil on canvas 74.5 x 59
Signed
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Aboriginal Girl
Indian Ink & Watercolour on paper 60 x 45
Signed
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Dunedin
Acquired from McGregor Wright Gallery, Wellington
81 PETER MCINTYRE (1910 - 95)
PETER MCINTYRE (1910 - 95)
83 RICHARD KILLEEN (b. 1946)
Mirror in The Sky Oil on hardboard 67.5 x 45.5
Artist name, title & date 1973 inscribed on artist label affixed verso
$3,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Peter Webb Galleries
84 GORDON WALTERS (1919 - 95) Maho, 1979
Screenprint on paper, edition 34/50, 34 x 21
Signed & title inscribed
$4,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Peter Webb Galleries
85 RUDI GOPAS (1913 - 83)
Emerging Light, Forecast for the Decade Oil on hardboard 91 x 91
Signed, inscribed & dated 1970 verso
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Petar/James Gallery, Auckland
Signed, inscribed & dated 1964 verso
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Cambridge
Thence by descent
EXHIBITED
The Group, 1965
86 IAN SCOTT (1945 - 2013)
Anawhata
Oil on board 45 x 60
87 GARTH TAPPER (1927 - 99)
Character Witness from the Law and its People Series Oil on board 50 x 54
Signed
$6,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Hamilton
PROVENANCE
Signed
$2,500 - 3,500
88 FRANK GROSS (1908 - 63)
Cubist Cityscape
Graphite on paper 48 x 59.5
Private Collection, Matamata
Nelson Composition
Oil on board 49 x 59
Signed & dated 1956
$5,000 - 7,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Matamata
EXHIBITED
The Group Show, 3 - 18 November 1956, Cat no. 2, price 10 gns
89 FRANK GROSS (1908 - 63)
90
GRETCHEN ALBRECHT (b. 1943)
Easter
Gouache & collage on paper 40 x 60
Signed & dated 1991
$5,500 - 7,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Hamilton
91 ROBIN WHITE (b. 1946)
Harbour Cone from Portobello
Screenprint, edition 29/50, 15 x 15
Signed, inscribed & dated 1973 verso
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Private Collection, Auckland
Signed
$4,000 - 6,000
92 PATRICIA FRANCE (1911 - 95)
A Day in the Country
Gouache on board 39 x 43.5
PROVENANCE
93 TOSS WOOLLASTON (1910 - 98)
Old Kiln at Upper Moutere
Watercolour 35.4 x 27.2
Signed
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Gifted to artist’s niece
Acquired from Dunbar Sloane, Three Day Art & Pottery Auction, 28/04/1998, No. 18
Private Collection, Wellington
94 GARY BAIGENT (b. 1941)
Marsden Wharf, 1965
Silver gelatin photograph, unique, 18 x 23.5
$2,000 - 4,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
Acquired from McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, 2004
95 BEN CAUCHI (b. 1974)
Relic, 2003
Ambrotype 23 x 19
$2,500 - 4,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
Acquired from C M Moore Gallery, Wellington, 2004
96 BEN CAUCHI (b. 1974)
The Closed Door, 2003
Ambrotype 22.5 x 19
$2,500 - 4,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
Acquired from C M Moore Gallery, Wellington, 2004
97 LAURENCE ABERHART (b. 1949)
Lyttelton Heads, Lyttelton, 1980
Silver gelatin vintage photograph, gold and selenium toned 19 x 24.5
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
ILLUSTRATED
Gregory O’Brien, Justin Paton, Aberhart, Victoria University Press, Wellington 2008, plate 9
98 LAURENCE ABERHART (b. 1949)
Moreporks (Bird Skins Room No. 2), Taranaki St, Wellington, 3 October 1995
Silver gelatin photograph (printed 2000) #9
17 x 24
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
ILLUSTRATED
Gregory O’Brien, Justin Paton, Aberhart, Victoria University Press, Wellington 2008, plate 137
99 ANS WESTRA (1936 - 2023)
Hangi Workers, Ringatu Hui, Ruatoria, 1963
Silver gelatin print, 1 of 3 vintage prints
(First printing 1985), 27 x 27.5
Signed
$3,500 - 5,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
Acquired from McNamara Gallery, Whanganui
100 ANS WESTRA (1936 - 2023)
Ruatoria, 1963
Silver gelatin print 28.5 x 28
Signed
$3,500 - 5,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
Acquired from Suite Gallery, Auckland
101 MARK ADAMS (b. 1949)
Portrait of the Painter, Tony Fomison 1993, The studio, Gunson St, Freemans Bay
Gold toned, silver bromide photograph 7.5 x 12
$3,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Napier
Acquired from McNamara Gallery, 2004
CONDITIONS OF SALE & A GUIDE TO BUYERS
The highest bidder shall be the buyer. In the event of any dispute as to the bidding in respect of any lot, that lot may be offered again at the discretion of the auctioneer whose decision shall be absolute and final.
The auctioneer has the right -
(i) to refuse any bid;
(ii) to advance the bidding at his absolute discretion;
(iii) to place a reserve on any lot;
(iv) to place a bid or bids on behalf of the seller;
(v) to withdraw any lot from sale;
(vi) to require a successful bidder to pay forthwith the whole or any part of the purchase price.
The auctioneer acts as the agent of the seller and neither he nor the seller shall be responsible for any defects or faults in any lot or for any errors of description or for genuineness or authenticity of any lot and no compensation shall be paid in respect of same.
From the time of lot being sold, such lot will be the responsibility of the buyer.
Successful bidders are required to pay for purchases immediately on completion of sale unless otherwise arranged.
All intending buyers are required to register for a bidding number prior to auction commencing. Subscribers can use their permanent bidding number. We reserve the right to ask for identification if you are a first time client of International Art Centre.
Each lot shall be paid for and removed at the buyers expense by no later than 4:00pm Friday 29 November 2024 unless otherwise arranged failing which the auctioneer and/or the seller shall have the right to forfeit any deposit paid by the buyer and to resell the lot either by public or private sale and any deficiency on costs of resale shall be borne by the defaulting buyer.
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BUYERS PREMIUM
18.5% Buyers premium plus GST on premium applies to all lots. (Total buyers premium is 21.21% including GST)
Lot 28
ROBERT ELLIS
Te Rawhiti IV
Lot 7
ANN ROBINSON
Nikau Vase
Gretchen Albrecht, Flowers at Window, 1969 auctions@artcntr.co.nz
Illustrated:
Tocker
SINGLE VENDOR
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ARTIST INDEX
A
ABERHART L 19, 97, 98
ADAMS M 101
ALBRECHT G 29, 90
ANGUS R........................................... 25
B
BANKSY 40, 41
BAIGENT G ...................................... 94
BARRAUD C D 69, 70
BINNEY D 23, 24
BLOMFIELD C 60
BOROUGHS J ................................. 80
C
CAUCHI B 95, 96
CHING R .......................................... 78
CLAIRMONT P 39
CLARK R S 27
COTTON S ......................................... 12
CUMMINGS V .......................... 65, 66
E
EDGAR J .............................................. 6
ELLIS R ......................................... 13, 28
F
FAHEY J ............................................ 54
FEU’U F .............................................. 76
FOMISON T 37, 38
FRANCE P 92
G
GAZIER A 58
GIMBLETT M 3, 4
GOLDIE C F 32, 33, 34
GOOD R ............................................ 56
GOPAS R 85
GOSSAGE S 8, 9, 10, 11
GROSS F.................................... 88, 89 H
HODGKINS F 61, 62 HOTERE R 30, 49, 53 K
R 83 L
A 77 LETT B .................................................... 1 LINDAUER G.................................... 35
LOVELL-SMITH R 5
S L 63, 64
G................................... 55
T 50, 51, 52
C 68
P .......................... 16, 17,18
MADDOX A ..................................... 48
MAUGHAN K 15
MCCAHON C 46, 47
MCINTYRE P .............................. 81, 82
MCLAUCHLAN N J ........................ 73
MCLEOD A 31
MOFFITT T 42, 43, 44, 45
MORTIMER R..................................... 2
MRKUSICH M 22
VAN DER VELDEN P 71, 72
G...................................... 84 WESTRA A 99, 100 WHITE R 91 WOLFE P ........................................... 74 WONG B............................................ 14
WOOLLASTON T 21, 57, 93
PHILIP CLAIRMONT
Couch Diptych
ABSENTEE BIDDING FORM IMPORTANT
& RARE ART
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Signature / / 2024
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