IN CONVERSATION with Michael Smither CNZM
International Art Centre is delighted to host leading New Zealand artist Michael Smither in conversation with Director, Richard Thomson.
Join us at 11am Wednesday, 20 March at our Parnell premises, 202 Parnell Road.
An opportunity to view the Important & Rare Art auction, including a selection of Michael Smither’s works, will follow the event.
EVENT
11am Wednesday, 20 March
Limited seating available RSVP auctions@artcntr.co.nz
Illustrated: Michael Smither by Sir Grahame Sydney, November 2022
13
14 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
1 DON BINNEY (1940 - 2012)
Manunui, Hauturu II
Screenprint on Italian Fabriano 300gsm archival art paper, edition 21/80 97.5 x 65
Signed in plate
$12,000 - 16,000
In October 2023 the Binney Estate in conjunction with Auckland’s Northern Club issued a new limited edition Don Binney screenprint of Manunui, Hauturu II, painted in 2005, from the Collection of the Northern Club.
The Club’s fundraising initiative coincided with the book launch of Gregory O’Brien’s Flight Path. To preserve the authenticity and legacy of Don Binney, these limited edition screenprints have been produced utilising the same process and screen printer, Artrite, that Don used for most of his screen prints. Each work is on Italian Fabriano 300gsm archival art paper and embossed with the seal of Artrite, hand numbered, titled and signed by Philippa Binney, wife of the late artist on behalf of the Binney Estate. An authentication label is affixed verso.
2 ROBIN WHITE (b.1946)
Postcard From Pleasant Island I, II, III, IV
Screenprint, edition 3/30 37.5 x 56.3
Signed & dated 1989
$10,000 - 15,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
15
16 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
3 COLIN MCCAHON (1919 - 1987)
Landscape, 1949
Brush ink drawing on paper 19 x 25
Signed & dated 1949
$10,000 - 15,000
RECORD NUMBER
cm001420
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Australia
4 LEN CASTLE (1924 - 2011)
Untitled – Waka Bowl
Glazed ceramic 17 x 93
Initialled on base
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
5 COLIN MCCAHON (1919 - 1987)
North from Mt Atkinson, 1957
Ink on paper 21 x 27.5
Signed & dated 1957
$10,000 - 15,000
RECORD NUMBER
cm001029
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
17
Untitled
Gouache and pencil
Signed & inscribed with artist’s notes
$10,000 - 15,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Untitled
Gouache on paper 54 x 46
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
18 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
6 GORDON WALTERS (1919 - 95)
on paper 23 x 12
7 GORDON WALTERS (1919 - 95)
19
Cube
New Zealand & Indian Granite 18 x 17
$6,000 - 10,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Christchurch
Manawarahi Female Huia, Hawkes Bay Museum
Pigment inks on Hahnemuhle paper, edition
1/10 145 x 109
Signed & dated 2022
in ink verso
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Christchurch
EXHIBITED
Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland
20 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
8 JOHN EDGAR (1950 - 2021)
9 FIONA PARDINGTON (b. 1961)
21
Ralph Hotere (1931-2013) was one of the most prolific and versatile New Zealand artists with an active career spread over more than half a century. A rough indication of his fertile productivity is that according to the Australasian Art Sales Digest more than 2,000 works by him have been sold at auction (a number exceeded within this country only by Michael Smither). The group of works by Hotere in this auction (most from the artist’s estate) offers vivid snapshots of his work from the early 1960s to the early 2000s and of the great variety of form, medium, support, subject and style he manifested across his impressive career.
A couple of undated oils on canvas, both Untitled, in all likelihood date from around 1962-63 when Hotere, already fully abstract in his manner, was living and working in Europe. The larger of the two works, consisting of pink, yellow and orange abstract shapes against a brick-red background has some similarities in colour and shapes (though not otherwise) to his first well-known series, Sangro (1962-64), named after the river in Italy where his soldier brother died in World War II. These are confident, authoritative works by a young artist still searching out his direction in art.
More than a decade later, Requiem for Tony, a watercolour pencil and ink diptych on card from 1975, shows the artist in a different phase, exploring the expressive possibilities of clusters of thin, closely stacked vertical lines in various colours, against abstract backgrounds. He used this device for numerous works in the 1970s including several major public murals, such as the Founders Theatre in Hamilton. The title references Anthony Watson, a composer and musician friend of the artist who had recently died. This exquisite work is a study for one of several larger paintings dedicated to Watson in the Requiem series. Given Watson’s vocation it is tempting to see the clustered lines as having musical connotations (staves? strings?), along with the title’s allusion to the Requiem mass.
A decade and a half later in 1991, Aramoana and Winter Solstice, Carey’s Bay are highly characteristic works on paper in various media, including multi-coloured oil pastels, both referencing revered and often cited locations in Otago Harbour visible from Hotere’s Port Chalmers studio; in both, crosses (in various configurations) are prominent, as are implicit allusions to the Catholic motif of Stations of the Cross through the number (14) of dots and crosses present. Place as the locus of spiritual meditation is central to Hotere’s later practice.
Peter Simpson
22 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
Ralph Hotere outside “first studio” on Flagstaff, Port Chalmers, Marti Friedlander. Courtesy Gerrard and Marti Friedlander Charitable Trust
$12,000 - 18,000
PROVENANCE
Collection of the Artist’s brother
FOUR WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST’S BROTHER LOTS 10 -13
23
10
RALPH HOTERE (1931 - 2013)
Untitled
Oil on canvas 71.5 x 71
Stamped Hotere verso
Untitled Oil on canvas 45 x 51
Signed & stamped Hotere 15 verso
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Winter Solstice, Carey’s Bay
Oil pastel & acrylic on paper 30.5 x 20.5
Signed & dated 7.91, inscribed Winter Solstice, Carey’s Bay on card affixed
$12,000 - 16,000
PROVENANCE
Collection of the Artist’s brother
24 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
11 RALPH HOTERE (1931 - 2013)
Collection of the Artist’s brother
12 RALPH HOTERE (1931 - 2013)
25
26 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
13
RALPH HOTERE (1931 - 2013)
Aramoana
Mixed media on paper 64 x 42.5
Signed inscribed & dated 1991 Port Chalmers, inscribed For Irene & Suzi at Carey’s Bay
December 1991 on card affixed
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Collection of the Artist’s brother
14
RALPH HOTERE (1931 - 2013)
Requiem For Tony
Watercolour, pencil and ink on card 37 x 54
Signed & dated Port Chalmers, 1975
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Drawing for a Diptych - Requiem For Tony
27
Ming Circle, 1980
Acrylic polymer on Arches Aquarelee 300lb
Watercolour paper 76 x 107
Signed $10,000 - 15,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Tauranga
Eclipse
Acrylic on board 100 x 100
Signed, inscribed Eclipse & dated 1984
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
28 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
15 MAX GIMBLETT (b. 1935)
16 GUY NGAN (1926 - 2017)
29
Into the Fire Libragloss ink and UV gloss on aluminium 101 x 101
Signed, inscribed & dated 2016 verso
$14,000 - 18,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
30 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
17 MAX GIMBLETT (b. 1935)
Anchor
Libragloss ink and UV gloss on aluminium 101 x 101
Signed, inscribed & dated 19/2 verso
$14,000 - 18,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
31
18 MAX GIMBLETT (b. 1935)
19 FATU FEU’U (b. 1946)
IA MANA
Acrylic on canvas 214 x 380
Signed & dated 2012
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Collection of the Artist
EXHIBITED
Reconciliation, ARTIS Gallery, Auckland, 2019
Tautai Pacific Arts Trust, Auckland, 2020
Fatu Feu’u considers this work as one of the most important of his career. IA MANA was first displayed in an exhibition in Feu’u’s village of Poutasi, Samoa in 2012. The exhibition commemorated the 50th anniversary of Samoa’s independence from New Zealand and the signing of the Treaty of Friendship between New Zealand and Samoa.
Prime Minister Sir John Key formally opened the exhibition. The painting also references former Prime Minister Helen Clark, who travelled to Samoa in 2002 for the 40th anniversary of Samoa’s independence and offered an apology to Samoa for the failings of New Zealand’s early colonial administration.
In 2009 Poutasi was devastated by a tsunami which became a catalyst for the majority of Fatu’s future work. An important icon of this painting is the ‘I’ which is apparent in many of Feu’u’s works. This represents unity between communities, families and individuals.
32 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
33
20 PETER STICHBURY (b. 1969)
Natalie Acrylic on linen 71 x 55.5
Signed, titled & dated 2004 verso
$40,000 - 60,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
In 1987 Peter Stichbury graduated from Elam School of Fine Art and was awarded the James Wallace Art Award. Gathering ideas from magazines, the internet, popular culture and his childhood memories, the artist continues to develop a body of work exploring, interpreting and reflecting upon the nature of identity.
Stichbury’s intricate, psychological portraits of both real and imagined people explore themes of popular culture, human consciousness, and science.
Early portraits draw heavily upon the commercial imagery of advertising and celebrity, focusing on ideals of perfection revered in contemporary culture. Highlighted in his first major public gallery exhibition, The Alumni 2008, at Auckland’s Te Tuhi art space, Stichbury’s characters fulfill roles in imagined social hierarchies including teenage models, misfits and intellectuals. Their polished and modulated faces are almost distorted by the efforts of idealisation.
The painting included in this sale reflects the artist’s fascination with pop culture. Natalie depicts AustralianBritish singer Natalie Imbruglia.
Peter Stichbury’s paintings are held in numerous collections including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch, Nevada Museum of Art, USA and La Casa Encendida, Spain.
34 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
35
21 DICK FRIZZELL (b. 1943)
Rastafouri
Oil on canvas 200 x 180
Signed, inscribed Rastafouri & dated 26/5/2006
$80,000 - 120,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Gow Langsford Gallery, 2006
EXHIBITED
Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
LITERATURE
Dick Frizzell, The Painter, Godwit, 2009, p. 281
36 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
37
Loyalty from The Virtues Series
Laminated Giclee print on aluminium composite panel, edition 1021/1067, Heni editions catalogue number H9-7 120 x 96
Signed verso
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
38 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
22
DAMIEN HIRST (British b. 1965)
Honesty from The Virtues Series
Laminated Giclee print on aluminium composite panel, edition 668/728, Heni editions catalogue number H9-5, 120 x 96
Signed verso
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
39
23
DAMIEN HIRST (British b. 1965)
24 HEATHER STRAKA (b. 1972)
Honeytrap 8
Oil on cotton board 60 x 45
Signed & dated 2016
$18,000 - 25,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wanganui
Heather Straka’s insightful explorations through her different approaches in the dual mediums of paint and film, have created a significant body of compelling and often controversial work. Straka demonstrates technical control of her medium, coupled with a finely modulated handling of her contentious subject matter. She deftly questions traditions and challenges the politically correct.
The Honeytrap paintings, as seen in the painting included in this sale, are direct, intimate and sensual. Befitting the bare backs and cameo-like oval format of the paintings. The feel is restrained, almost Victorian, but Straka is in her element relishing her (painterly) powers of suggestion.
40 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
41
25 GRETCHEN ALBRECHT (b. 1943)
Night – Nomadic Geometries (with gold and silver bars)
Acrylic on canvas 94 x 183
Signed, inscribed & dated 1995
$80,000 - 110,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
42 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
43
26 FIONA PARDINGTON (b. 1961)
Wahi/Fear Kakapo, 2004
Pigment inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, edition 4/10 109 x 144
Signed & dated 2004 in ink verso
$30,000 - 40,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland
44 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
45
Portrait of a life-cast of Matoua Tawai Three
Quarter 2017
Inkjet print on Hahnemuhle paper, edition
6/10 110 x 81
Signed & dated 2017
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland
46 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
27 FIONA PARDINGTON (b. 1961)
47
28 RALPH HOTERE (1931 - 2013)
Carey’s Bay and BNZ Port Chalmers
Engraved and burnished stainless steel in black Victorian window sash with cast pewter mountings 101 x 71
Signed, inscribed Carey’s Bay ... and BNZ Port Chalmers & dated 04.04.04
$50,000 - 75,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, UK
Purchased by the present owner from Temple Gallery, Dunedin
EXHIBITED
Ralph Hotere: New Work, Temple Gallery, Dunedin, 2004
In this major piece from 2004 several familiar elements combine to form a work that, is to the best of my knowledge, almost unique in Hotere’s work in foregrounding the six-pointed Star of David, universally associated with Judaism and the State of Israel. (The Star of David also featured in Hotere’s lithographic series Jerusalem, Jerusalem of 2003.)
As with many later pieces, this work is contained within a salvaged, wooden Victorian window-frame painted black. Inside the frame is a rectangle of mechanically burnished and engraved stainless steel attached to the black-painted backboard with cast pewter mountings, again a feature of many late works.
The metal has been cut and peeled back to expose triangular black shapes constituting the six points of a star, the points of the star being emphasised by the pattern of the burnishings on the metal. In the centre of the ‘star’ is a burnished circle. Whatever the precise religious and political connotations of the work, it is worth remembering that Hotere’s attention had been drawn to the Middle East by the Gulf War of 2003, a conflict in which Israel while not directly involved was implicated through alliances to the USA. Passionate protest against the ravages of war had, of course, been a recurrent theme of Hotere’s art since the Sangro paintings of the 1960s. Carey’s Bay and BNZ Port Chalmers is less the title of the work that the location of its making.
Peter Simpson
48 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
49
29 ROBIN WHITE (b. 1946)
Florence and Harbour Cone
Silkscreen print, A/P 40, 63.5 x 44
Signed, inscribed Florence and Harbour Cone & dated 1975
Accompanied by two preparatory screenprints
$12,000 - 16,000
PROVENANCE
Estate of Patrick Hutchings
ILLUSTRATED
Robin White New Zealand Painter
Alister Taylor, Waiura, Martinborough, New Zealand, 1981 p.58
Professor Patrick Hutchings (1929-2023) completed an MA (Hons) in English at Victoria University of Wellington in 1951 and was a Junior Lecturer in Philosophy at Victoria University College in 1954 before completing his studies in Philosophy at Oxford University in 1960. Between 1958 and 1978 he taught philosophy at the University of Western Australia in Perth, gave the John Power Lecture at the Power Institute at the University of Sydney, delivered the annual Hocken Lecture at the University of Otago in 1974, and was a Visiting Professor of English in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California at Irvine.
In 1978 he moved to Victoria where he was Reader in the School of Humanities at Deakin University in Geelong until 1994, during which time he was also a Visiting Research Fellow at Birkbeck College at the University of London. Latterly, he was Senior Fellow and Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne and Editor-in-Chief for Australasia of Sophia, the international journal of philosophy and traditions. He researched and published internationally on art, and in the 1970s was the leading writer on New Zealand contemporary realists, such as Robin White and Brent Wong.
Linda Tyler
50 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
Patrick Hutchings in 1991 with Peter Corlett’s The Sophist. In 1992 he published the book Peter Corlett: Sculptures Photograph: PeterCorlett
51 ESTATE OF PATRICK HUTCHINGS LOTS 29-34
30 ROBIN WHITE (b. 1946)
Relatives at the Maketu Church 1972
Conté on paper 36 x 26
Signed
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Estate of Patrick Hutchings
Made in 1972, this conté drawing on paper was the basis for an edition of 50 silk screen prints exhibited at the Barry Lett Galleries in Auckland in December 1974 which sold for $30 each. The setting is the same small town on the Bay of Plenty coast as Robin White’s iconic fish and chip shop painting which is in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Maketu was the landing place of the Arawa canoe and is named after an ancient kumara pit in Hawaiki, where the sea journeys began. The three women relatives are superimposed in front of the historic St Peter’s Catholic Church in Maketu, symbolic of the arrival of settler culture in Aotearoa.
St Peter’s was designed by Father James Russell Madan who served with the Mill Hill Missionaries at Matata in 1886. The church was built by the local iwi of Maketu and was described in the Bay of Plenty Times in 1888 as an ingenious structure: There is not a nail in the building except in the roof, the timbers being put together by bolts and screws St Peter’s also features in Easter, Maketu (1971) a screenprint made by the artist in an edition of 25 and sold at both Barry Lett Galleries in Auckland and Peter McLeavey Gallery in Wellington for $12.
Robin White has shown the three women like a holy trinity in front of the simple entrance porch, framed by the barge boards of the steeply pitched Victorian gothic corrugated iron roof. Then as now, the church’s weatherboards were coated with white paint and its roof and joinery were painted red, making it resemble a wharenui or meeting house. The artist’s father Albert Tikitū White (1894-1976) was descended from a Ngāti Awa woman, Mere Te Uia, and met his wife-to-be Florence Miriam Dunlop (19041979) when he moved to the Bay of Plenty to find work and boarded with her family.
Writing about this work in his Art International article on Young Contemporary New Zealand Realists in 1973, Patrick Hutchings emphasised the way in which the cypress tree on the right rears up like a flame, dominating the figures and casting a pall on the mood: the melancholy little church and landscape impose their psychological tone on the three women, who are smiling, bravely but cheerfully … a seen landscape has called from the artist a memorial picture, with faces from the family album; a dream, a vision of the past, expressed in the precise tones of a pragmatic present.
Linda Tyler
52 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
53 ESTATE OF PATRICK HUTCHINGS LOTS 29-34
31 ROBIN WHITE (b. 1946)
Allan’s Beach
Watercolour and acrylic on paper 28 x 22
Signed, inscribed & dated 1975
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Estate of Patrick Hutchings
Purchased from Barry Lett Galleries, 1975
REFERENCE:
Robin White, New Zealand Painter
Alister Taylor, Waiura, Martinborough, New Zealand, 1981 p.106
Windswept but beautiful Allan’s Beach is almost a kilometre in length and is named after a European farming family who were settlers in the district in the 1870s. It is only six kilometres from where Robin White lived at Lower Portobello and would have been in easy reach for short sketching excursions. It is characterised by its wide expanse of white sand which feels like icing sugar under foot. It is on the southeast facing seaward side of the long spit which narrows the entrance to Hooper’s Inlet to a channel just 170 metres wide. Surfers, trampers, artists (and naturists) reach this spot by walking an easy 500 metres across farmland and through a system of dunes which are covered in pīkao (pingao) sedge. The hollows in the sand often conceal slumbering fur seals, and sea lions as well as the nests of endangered yelloweyed penguins. An abundance of shore and seabirds fill the skies, and the colour of the water ranges from a deep green to crystal clear turquoise to a pale royal blue as it is in this painting.
Robin White’s watercolour and acrylic captures the beach on a calm and cloudless autumn day in April 1975, with the waves folding in an orderly fashion like curling pieces of parchment. The centrepiece of the work is the rounded form of Wharekakahu, the 40-metre-high island just immediately offshore from the Belmont promontory which is visible on the left and forms part of the eastern end of the beach. Known for its colony of Stewart Island shags usually visible near the right-hand end of its crest, Wharekakahu also has a colony of green-backed skinks and is a predator-free reserve, its Maori name alluding to the cloak of green vegetation covering its form. Based on a pencil drawing she made of the scene which was exhibited alongside this painting, Robin White has characterised Allan’s Beach as deserted.
The isolation and pristine nature of this coastline is emphasised by the tipped-up expanse of beige sand in the foreground. When she made this work, Robin White had been living in Dunedin for just over two years, having decamped from Bottle Creek and Porirua and driven south in December 1971. Gallerist Maureen Hitchings had driven her around the Otago Peninsula and she fell in love with the locality.
A year later in 1972, she was married. 1973 was meant to be her first year as a full-time artist, but her work was interrupted by the arrival of her son Michael, born in the spring. She still managed to participate in the Paris Print Biennale and exhibit with the Print Council of New York. Two years later, in 1975, she drew and painted Michael sitting on her studio floor holding one wing of his Buzzy Bee. Transposing this image to Allan’s Beach, she put a tangle of kelp behind him and a dead seagull in front of him, framing the composition like an inverted tombstone. She exhibited this drawing and watercolour as Michael, Allan’s Beach. Many years later, she commented that the dead bird was a cipher for what she felt might be the loss of her soaring career with the onslaught of motherhood.
Despite her fears, her artistic successes continued. In February 1975, Harry Miller applauded her success in receiving Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grant in his column in Dunedin’s Evening Star and the Auckland Art Gallery organised an outreach exhibition of her paintings and prints in the Avondale Branch Library. She put the money towards a new studio in which she produced exhibitions of pencil, watercolour and silkscreen prints for both Peter McLeavey Gallery in Wellington (December 1975), and Barry Lett Galleries in Auckland. It was at the latter exhibition that this painting was purchased by Patrick Hutchings for $500 in August 1976.
Linda Tyler
54 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
55 ESTATE OF PATRICK HUTCHINGS LOTS 29-34
32 BRENT WONG (b. 1945)
Establishment
Acrylic on hardboard 99 x 122
Signed & dated 1969
$270,000 - 350,000
PROVENANCE
Estate of Patrick Hutchings
ILLUSTRATED
Islands 2 Arts & Letters, Summer 1972
A New Zealand Quarterly Vol. 1 No.2, Page 131
One of the twelve paintings which comprised the artist’s first solo exhibition held at the Rothman’s Cultural Centre in Wellington in August 1969, Establishment is a classic Brent Wong composition. The characteristic combination of blue sky, sea, dry grassed hills, fluffy white clouds and ghostly white architectural elements mark the work as dating from the first decade of his exhibiting career. Four of the paintings from Wong’s first solo exhibition were reproduced in the November 1969 issue of Ascent: A Journal of the Arts in New Zealand, edited by Leo Bensemann and Barbara Brooke for the Caxton Press in Christchurch, the city where he had been encouraged by Rita Angus to show as part of The Group at the Canterbury Society of Arts. The Hocken Library bought a painting in May 1969, and the esteemed art critic and writer, Patrick Hutchings acquired this work to take back with him to Australia. At just 24 years of age, Brent Wong was heralded as the rising star of his generation.
In a footnote to his article Brent Wong: Surrealism in a Bland Landscape published in the second issue of Islands in 1972, Professor Hutchings remembers that when he visited Wong’s studio in January 1969, Establishment (which was named The Landing at that stage) was already underway. It is revealing that the work was once titled differently, since the jumble of architectural elements do indeed look like they have crash landed and tumbled apart. It is easy to see why Wong was described as a surrealist (a term he rejected): the chimney here seems to have taken root in the hillside separately from the other elements, the cylinder on top to disperse the smoke oriented like a telescope, pointing out of the picture frame. Balancing it is a rectangular plinth with a circular opening, also solidly anchored, while volutes, cornices and architraves topple off in all directions. Establishment
is similar to the Auckland Art Gallery’s Abandoned Settlement (1969) purchased in 1970, although there is still a floating shape in the sky above the ruins in that painting.
Rather than lamenting the loss of architectural heritage like John Radford’s Tip (1998) in Western Park, Ponsonby, Wong described his forms as constructions although they suggest castles in the air; structures that were never built. In his scholarly article on Young Contemporary New Zealand Realists for Art International, published in Zürich in 1973, Professor Hutchings describes them as concretising a regret for what was never there: a knot of details, an enigmatic and impossible folly, floating in the air above the carefully observed and beautifully recorded landscape…It is precisely that absence from New Zealand’s beautiful hills and plains of great, noble monumental buildings, that these curious follies comment upon.
Wong’s constructions are based on the pencil doodles and drawings of Wellington’s Victorian and Edwardian architecture that filled the four sketchbooks he carried with him at this time. Reproduced in the catalogue to the survey exhibition which Jim Barr mounted at the Dowse in 1978 and toured to twelve galleries nationally, Wong’s preliminary sketches are highly architectonic and of their time and place. They are reminiscent of architect Ian Athfield’s white-plastered house and office in Khandallah which began sprouting up in the 1960s, as well as Roger Walker’s Link Building on the Wellington waterfront, and the chunky, clunky geometric sculptures of fellow Chinese-Kiwi artist, Guy Ngan (1926-2017) who was director of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts between 1976 and 1986 where Wong frequently exhibited.
Linda Tyler
56 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
57 ESTATE OF PATRICK HUTCHINGS LOTS 29-34
58 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
ROBIN WHITE (b. 1946)
Mabel Mitchell’s Place, Waiotemarama, Hokianga
Silkscreen print, edition A/P 45 80.5 x 60
Signed, inscribed Mabel Mitchell’s Place, Waiotemarama, Hokianga, & dated 1977
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Estate of Patrick Hutchings
ILLUSTRATED
Robin White New Zealand Painter
Alister Taylor, Waiura, Matinborough, New Zealand, 1981 p.65
34 COMPLETE SET OF BARRY LETT MULTIPLES
The Complete Set of Barry Lett Gallery Multiples
12 screenprints with original cover sheet & box
Twelve screenprints 56 x 75
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Estate of Patrick Hutchings
59
33
ESTATE OF PATRICK HUTCHINGS LOTS 29-34
Photo of Michael Smither courtesy of Sir Grahame Sydney
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Oil on board 16 x 73.5
Signed & dated 1969 verso
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Oil on board 16 x 73.5
Signed verso
$25,000 - 35,000
61
35 MICHAEL SMITHER (b. 1939)
Afternoon Hawkdun Range
36 MICHAEL SMITHER (b. 1939)
Hawkdun Range
37 MICHAEL SMITHER (b. 1939)
Composition - Railway, 1967
Oil on board 108 x 120
Signed & dated 67
$200,000 - 260,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Hawkes Bay
ILLUSTRATED
Michael Smither Painter, Trish Gribben, Ron Sang Publication, 2004, p.54
In the late 1960s, Smither spent some time living in Australia. He returned freshly energised, and set about painting the New Zealand landscape with gusto. He was based for a time in the South Island, where he created some extraordinary, pared back images of the Central Otago landscape. He subsequently returned to the familiar surrounds of his hometown environment in Taranaki. During this period, he created some of his most iconic images, frequently depicting the dramatic land and sea views that dominated the region. His distinctive stylised depictions of New Plymouth capture its near symmetry and its powerful presence in the landscape. He has painted it numerous times, and it appears in many of his best-known artworks.
Smither noted that, New Plymouth’s isolation is an advantage for me. Here I am forced to find things out entirely for myself, away from artistic groups or trends. I wouldn’t want to be away from the sea. And here I am left alone to get on with painting without too many interruptions.
After the initial terror of seeing a real city like Melbourne, whose lights on our ship’s arrival escribed the curvature of the earth, New Plymouth was easy to get my brush around. I knew every building and often the people who worked in them. That’s me, bottom left, with my mop being a commercial cleaner at the railway station, as seen from my new confident and god-like point of view. - Michael Smither
62 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
63
38 MICHAEL SMITHER (b. 1939)
Akmons
Oil on board 70 x 114
Signed, inscribed Akmons verso & dated 2006
$90,000 - 130,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Stricken with toothache one day, so the story goes, Michael Smither started drawing rocks to take his mind off the pain. Studying the many shapes that looked the same, he realised how each one has to be rendered differently as it catches the light and creates shadow. In this painting, he has extended the technique of painting round-edged stones to encompass akmons, the name given heavy blocks of concrete designed in the Netherlands in the 1960s to reinforce seawalls. As he has done with the stones of the South Taranaki coastline in works like Rocks with Mountain (1968) in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, where a tiny tractor and Mount Egmont are dwarfed by grey boulders in the foreground, he uses a rapidly receding perspective in this painting to achieve a sense of the enormous size of the concrete formations.
While the location is not identified in the title, it is recognisable as Port Taranaki. There, 13 tonne akmons are regularly lifted into place by huge cranes to shore-up the Main Breakwater, and 4.5 tonne akmons are used to protect the Lee Breakwater from the action of the Tasman Sea. Reclamation for the Lee Breakwater was begun in 1966, and in 2006 when Smither painted these structures in this painting, they had been in position for forty years.
But Smither has a way of making the familiar seem strange. These concrete forms seem futuristic or extraterrestrial, taking on a surreal or even menacing aspect. The mood is set by the way in which Smither has rendered them in cool blues which make it seem like evening, even though the sun is shining overhead. The akmons dwarf the woman seated on one of the surfaces, and make the fishing rod behind her seem fragile and unprotected.
By comparison, the surface of the sea which she has been contemplating is inviting, reflecting the azure blue of the sky on a summer’s day. In the distance is the sawtoothed outline of the breakwater, with the Sugar Loaf islands beyond. The beauty of this coastline - well-known by Smither, who grew up in New Plymouth - is contrasted with the frightening scale of human intervention, symbolised by the akmons. They pile up towards the viewer, threatening to tumble forward and crush us under their weight, perhaps acting as a metaphor for damages done by humans to the natural environment which will have their consequences in the future.
Linda Tyler
64 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
65
Building - Hills - Cloud
Acrylic on board 60.2 x 84.3
Signed & dated 1982
$50,000 - 75,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Purchased from Fine New Zealand & Foreign Paintings, Webb’s 27/06/2000
66 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
39 BRENT WONG (b. 1945)
67
Big Sunlit Hill
Oil on canvas 140 x 170
Signed & dated 21/6/2011
$60,000 - 80,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
68 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
40 DICK FRIZZELL (b. 1943)
69
41 CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE (1870 - 1947)
Memories, Rakapa, an Arawa Chieftainess
Oil on canvas 19 x 15
Signed & dated 1911
Inscribed verso on paper label in black ink: Memories Rakapapa, An Arawa Chieftainess by C. F. Goldie Sale price £14-14-0 M6
$450,000 - 650,000
PROVENANCE
Christie’s Melbourne, Australian and European Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings and Prints, Part I & II, November 25-26, 1997, lot 40
Private Collection, acquired from the above auction
Thence by descent to the current owner
Rakapa Te Tira (also known as Rakapa Manawa/ Ngatatau/Rapana/Mitai) was a rangatira (chieftainess ) of Te Arawa who lived at Te Takinga marae at Mourea, on the eastern shores of Lake Rotorua.
Originally of Otaki, Rakapa married into the Arawa tribe. Rakapas’s family by marriage fought for the colonial government in the North Island Land Wars of the mid19th century.
Charles Goldie painted Rakapa’s portrait at least six times between 1910 and 1918. Another, but slightly smaller version is illustrated p. 215 C F Goldie: His Life & Painting, Alister Taylor & Jan Glen, 1979. This favoured subject bears traditional moko, pounamu/greenstone earrings and talisman tiki.
Rakapa was the daughter of Rangi Topeora and Te Wehi-o-te rangi of Otaki. In the Wellington district RangiTopeora, of Ngati-Toa was known as a great poetess. She gained celebrity for her masterful character and for the number of songs she composed and sang, from affectionate addresses to virulent kai-oraora against her enemies.
Her daughter Rakapa of Otaki became the wife of the late Petera te Pukuatua of the Arawa. She inherited Topeora’s poetic gifts and her waiata are favourite songs among the Rotorua elders.
70 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
Through his lifetime and legacy, 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 William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
In 1898, fully informed in the French academic style, the artist returned to New Zealand and began collaborating with his former tutor Louis John Steele. The two worked on a number of paintings including The Arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand, a large scale history painting after Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa. Before long, however, the relationship deteriorated likely caused by tensions around the former student’s growing success. Goldie went on to open his own studio and establish himself as a successful portraitist of Maori.
A visit to Rotorua in 1901 was the first of several field trips during which the artist was introduced to local Maori 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 Maori he met and painted around this period, including Wiremu Patara Te Tuhi and Te Aho-o-te-rangi Wharepu (Ngati Mahuta), Ina te Papatahi (Nga Puhi), and Wharekauri Tahuna (Ngati 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 which 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, he was married, at age fifty to thirty five year old Olive Cooper.
Marriage in Sydney circumvented the Goldie family disapproval of the relationship between Auckland’s 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 repainted 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 to which he had so strictly adhered in the past.
Goldie died in Auckland in 1947, his exquisite, spiritually-charged, often unsettling and ever powerful portraits of Maori having made an unsurpassed contribution to the history of art in New Zealand.
72 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
Oil on board 13 x 14.6
$100,000 - 150,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Ex Olive Goldie Collection
Webb’s Fine Paintings & Jewellery, July 1985
Acquired from above by current owner
74 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
42 CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE (1870 - 1947)
Washing Clothes in a Warm Pool, Whakarewarewa
43
FRANCES HODGKINS (1869 - 1947)
Picnic on a Beach, c.1911
Watercolour 30 x 37
Signed lower right
$45,000 - 65,000
PROVENANCE
Dr Neville Hogg
Webbs, The NZ Collection of Dr Neville Hogg, Auckland 12 Aug 1993, lot 80
Private Collection, Auckland
CATALOGUE NUMBER
FH1307
https://completefranceshodgkins.com
Between 1910 and 1912, Frances Hodgkins and her students fled the airless milieu of Paris and established themselves in Concarneau in Brittany during the summer months.
Even there, the midday heat was considerable, and students and local families who had flocked to the beach were glad of the shade provided by the red and white striped beach umbrellas which lined the foreshore. Once her students had settled to their day’s task, Hodgkins sometimes placed herself behind them, rapidly painting the groupings — the students and holiday makers in fashionably large straw hats contrasting with the traditional white caps of the local Breton women.
These compositional groups changed from day to day, hour to hour, the women either on their wooden slatted chairs or nestled on blankets, but always ready to move according to the sun, while little children played blissfully in the sand.
In Picnic on a Beach (a descriptor rather than a title given by the artist) Hodgkins uses an economy of detail and rapid brushstrokes to capture the tight group in the foreground. The bold sweeping curves behind them (possibly a line of rocks) is almost abstracted, illustrating her gradual move away from an Impressionist dabbing technique. Hodgkins uses an economy of detail, yet each figure, once identified, is also individualised.
Mary Kisler
76 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
Illustrated: Frances Hodgkins at Work on the Beach at Concarneau, c 1910, E H McCormick Papers, E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Linda Gill, 2015
https://completefranceshodgkins.com/objects/28054/ frances-hodgkins-at-work-on-the-beach-at-concarneau-c-1910
77
44 FRANCES HODGKINS (1869 - 1947)
Moroccan Street Vendors
(Moroccan Street Sellers) c. 1903
Watercolour 36.3 x 23.7
Initialled F M H, by Isabel Field.
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Mr & Mrs W N (Lydia) Pharazy, Wellington, (daughter of Isabel Field)
Purchased from Dunbar Sloane, Wellington, New Zealand, Dec 1 1977
Private Collection, Auckland
CATALOGUE NUMBER
FH0405
https://completefranceshodgkins.com
LITERATURE
E H McCormick, Works of Frances Hodgkins in New Zealand, Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland, 1954
After Frances Hodgkins arrived in Morocco at the end of November 1902, accompanied by an elderly companion and chaperone, Mrs Ashington, she wrote a glowing account of her first impressions, hoping to tempt friend and fellow artist Dorothy Kate Richmond to join them. She described the marketplace, where ‘… anyone with anything to sell sits down & sells it. There is a corner devoted to cobblers, dwellers in tents who seem to eke out a miserable existence patching each other’s old shoes… I hope to get some pictures here if I have any luck.’
Although the Medina and the marketplace provided rich subject matter, eventually the two women were forced to retreat, taking the advice of British Orientalist painter Alfred East, who stressed they would get no peace from inquisitive locals unless they retreated to courtyards or doorways to work unhindered.
In Moroccan Street Vendors the dark archway in the background acts as a foil to the vendors in the foreground, who appeared to have emptied the contents of a wooden bucket and earthenware vase onto the ochre-coloured sheet spread on the ground. With a few deft strokes, Hodgkins captures the hunched figures of the traders, rather than what they are selling, while in the background, a semi-reclining seller examines his wares, under the gaze of a prospective buyer.
Mary Kisler
78 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
79
45 SYDNEY LOUGH THOMPSON (1877 - 1973)
Peasant Women Coming to Town, Market Day, Concarneau, Brittany c.1948
Oil on canvas 44.5 x 53.5
Signed SL Thompson
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
H. Fisher & Son, June 1948
Sydney Lough Thompson was born in Oxford, North Canterbury in 1877 and studied at Canterbury College School of Art with Petrus van der Velden before departing for Europe in 1900 to further his studies
Like so many of his contemporaries, Thompson went to Europe to further his artistic education. There he enrolled at the Heatherly School of Art. However, the technical perfection demanded of the school’s pupils only seemed to have the effect of making the young artist reluctant to paint. Thompson left England in 1901 to study in Paris at the Académie Julian and took classes with Gabriel Ferrier and William-Adolphe Bouguereau. The French school had little influence on Thompson’s art instead, he found inspiration in Constable and Turner in England, the French impressionists and Paul Cezanne in France.
Thompson travelled extensively and spent three years in Brittany, where his impressionist style – full of sunlight and colour and of boats and ports – began to evolve. His works of this period are filled with vibrant hues of colour that brilliantly capture the Concarneau light. Thompson would return to Brittany again and again throughout his career. It was here that he defied the conventional techniques of the time and painted en plein air in the markets and harbours of Brittany. The region had attracted many artists, amongst them Frances Hodgkins, Paul Gauguin and Claude Monet and it became a major source of inspiration for Thompson’s work. Over the next seventy years of his working life, he spent more than half that time living and painting in France
No painter in New Zealand conducted a more extensive dialogue with Europe, or constructed a more seductive and appealing myth around the landscape of the Old World, than Sydney Thompson.
Juile King, At Home and Abroad published by Robert McDougall Art Gallery,1990
80 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
81
46 SYDNEY LOUGH THOMPSON (1877 - 1973)
On the Waterfront, Concarneau, Brittany
Oil on canvas 45.5 x 55
Signed SL Thompson
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
H. Fisher & Son, Christchurch
June 1948
82 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
83
47 FELIX KELLY (1914 - 94)
Hawksmoors Mausoleum, Castle Howard, 1964
Oil on board 43 x 56
Signed
$12,000 - 18,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wanganui
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 Neo-Romanticism, he exhibited alongside important British artists such as Lucian Freud, John Piper and fellow New Zealander Frances Hodgkins.
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. Rapidly, Kelly assembled a client list resembling a page from Who’s Who or De Brett’s.
In late career, his knowledge of architecture led to 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
The painting included in this sale depicts the Mausoleum at Hawksmoors Castle Howard. The Mausoleum rises 90 feet into the air and is supported by a colonnade of 20 pillars. Designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, it is one the finest free-standing mausoleums in northern Europe.
Building began in 1729, but was not completed until after the deaths of both Hawskmoor and the 3rd Earl, who was originally buried in the local parish church and reinterred in the mausoleum six years later.
Still the private burial place of the Howard family and nearly one mile from the house, the Mausoleum is not accessible during a visit. However, it is easy to see from the waterfall at Temple Basin and the curatorial team does lead special visits for the public.
84 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
85
48 BANKSY (British b. 1974)
Girl with Balloon
Screenprint, edition 51/150 70 x 50
Signed & dated 2004
Accompanied by Certificate of Authenticity
$500,000 - 700,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Girl with Balloon’s ascent to icon status began slowly. After the initial Shoreditch stencil and another version in London’s Southbank, appearing in 2002, the work remained little more than a local street art fixture, attractive to passers by but unknown among the wider cultural milieu.
It wasn’t until two years after Girl with Balloon’s initial appearance that Banksy embraced the image’s potential for widespread reproduction. He partnered with photographer and curator Steve Lazarides’s Pictures on Walls imprint to release the only extant print edition of Girl with Balloon The pair produced 600 unsigned and unnumbered prints, 150 signed and numbered prints, and 88 colored artist’s proofs which the artist sold both online and at an annual “squat art concept store” called Santa’s Ghetto. At a Sotheby’s London sale in October 2018, an anonymous collector purchased a Girl with Balloon painting for £1.1 million.
Shortly after the sale was hammered down, a hidden mechanism in the painting’s frame activated, shredding the work live on the podium and sending the tattered strands to the floor. The press widely covered the stunt, which led to perhaps the greatest expansion yet in Banksy’s presence on the secondary market. As for the painting that shredded itself at auction, it sold in its tattered form, with the new name Love is in the Bin (2018), for $25.4 million at a Sotheby’s auction in October 2021. This set a new auction record for Banksy.
Since 2019, a majority of Girl with Balloon prints have sold for six figure prices at auction, and a number of the colored artist’s proofs have sold for more than $1 million. A proof in the gold colorway sold for £1.1 million ($1.5 million) at a Sotheby’s auction in March 2021.
86 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
87
49 MAURO PERUCCHETTI (Italian b. 1949)
HM - The Queen
Pigmented Resin on marble base 56 x 18 x 15
Accompanied by Certificate of Authenticity
$28,000 - 38,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
50 CHARLES TOLE (1903 - 88)
Abstract Pattern - 1978
Oil on board 55 x 45
Signed & dated 1978
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
89
Untitled II
Acrylic paint, pencil and ink on paper 139 x 156
Signed & dated 2000
$140,000 - 180,000
PROVENANCE
Ex Air New Zealand Collection
Important & Rare International Art Centre, August 2016
Acquired from the above sale by the current owners
90 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
51 BILL HAMMOND (1947 - 2021)
91
52 DON BINNEY (1940 - 2012)
A Cape for Father Damien II
Oil on board 115 x 59
Signed & dated 1993
$45,000 - 65,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wellington
Private Collection, Auckland
Collectable Art International Art Centre, August 2019
Acquired from the above sale by the current Estate
EXHIBITED
Binney: Forty Years On, The Dowse, Lower Hutt 2003 - 2004
ILLUSTRATED
Don Binney: Nga Manu/Nga MotuBirds/Islands, Damian Skinner, Auckland University Press, 2003, p. 60
Don Binney Flight Path, Gregory O’Brien, Auckland University Press, 2023, p.308
REFERENCE
Included with this lot is a DVD recording directed by Roger Taberner, Auckland Art Gallery, 2004
According to Gregory O’Brien in his book Don Binney, Flight Path; The 1990s began not only with his fiftieth birthday but also with a revelatory encounter with Hawai’i. O’Brien continues; During the university recess in August he self-funded an unofficial, three-week sabbatical there, and found himself unexpectedly swept away by the light, atmosphere and ambience, and by the islands’ historical and cultural richness.
Binney wrote of the experience stating; It was like going through the looking-glass ... Hawai’i was a recovery - like learning to swim or walk or talk again.
Painted after Binney’s early 1990’s sabbatical in Hawaii, A Cape for Father Damien II features the volcanic landform of Molokai with a depiction of Father Damien on the beach wearing his wide brimmed hat.
In the sky above is a stylised image of a traditional feather cloak worn by Hawaiian chiefs. Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai (1840 -1889) was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium who ministered for sixteen years to lepers quarantined on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. In 2009 Father Damien was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI.
My idea was to offer a cape to Father Damien - to the moral and spiritual priest, an ahu’ula fabricated from the feathers of the apapani, with colour values of gold and red.
Don Binney
92 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
93
53 RAYMOND CHING (b. 1939)
Tiger, Asleep
Oil on panel 23 x 35
Signed & dated 1980
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
The Art of Raymond Ching, International Art Centre, Auckland, 1980
ILLUSTRATED
Ray Harris-Ching, Masters of the Wild, Gulf Publishing Company, 1990, p. 100
As with nearly all of my studies from life, no white paint has been used in the production of this sketch. To work as quickly as possible, I draw the animal in some detail directly onto a stark white gesso ground. Then, I put in layers of light ochres, yellows and blacks-barely enough to cover the pencil work, but with enough colour to establish the form and presence of a tiger on the painted surface. Working this way, the image slowly emerges like a photographic print in the developing tray. I hope that at least some of the energy of these huge cats is apparent in this painting. In such a study of rest and calm there should, however, be no doubt that if the animal were to awaken, whatever was around and about would need to rethink its position!
Raymond Ching
94 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
95
54 RAYMOND CHING
1939)
The Peaceable KingdomThe Goose Creek Sermon Oils on board 74 x 112
Signed lower right
$35,000 - 45,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
ARTIS Gallery, Auckland
This work by New Zealand born, Internationally acclaimed, wildlife artist Raymond Ching is a unique rendition and tribute to a fellow artist.
Edward Hicks (1780-1849) was a Quaker minister who supported his family by painting commercial signs in the Philadelphia area. He is one of the best known folk artists in the world, most notably for his 62 versions of Peaceable Kingdom paintings. By the time of his visit to Lincoln, Edward Hicks had already begun painting his famous series of Peaceable Kingdom canvases. The Peaceable Kingdom paintings depicted arrangements of animals living peacefully together. Hicks completed 62 works in this series. In each painting animals and figures are placed in iconographic arrangements, with predator and prey together.
In the present painting Ray Ching uses this same device, depicting hares and rabbits sleeping peacefully in the laps of their natural predator the fox.
Among the hares, rabbits and foxes Ching has transcribed the words of a sermon delivered by Edward Hicks at Goose Creek, Pennsylvania. Ching has underlined certain lines, whilst others are obscured by the paint or frame.
96 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
(b.
97
P. 90 - 91 The Trees & The Axe Acrylic/Alkyd on panel 61 x 91.5
Signed & inscribed
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
ARTIS Gallery, Auckland
ILLUSTRATED
P. 90-91 Aesop’s Outback Fables, Ray Ching
ARTIS Gallery, 2018
56 RAYMOND CHING (b. 1939)
P. 182-183 The Poorly Rabbits’ Friends Alkyd/acrylic on board 76 x 61
Signed & inscribed
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
ARTIS Gallery, Auckland
ILLUSTRATED
P. 182 - 185 Aesop’s Outback Fables, Ray Ching, ARTIS Gallery, 2018
98 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
55 RAYMOND CHING (b. 1939)
99
Head of Otago Harbour
Acrylic on board 59 x 73
Signed
$35,000 - 45,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
John Leech Gallery, An Exhibition of Recent Acrylic Paintings, Monday 29 April 1985
100 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
57 PETER MCINTYRE (1910 - 95)
101
Whakapapa River
Watercolour 52 x 71.5
Signed $20,000 - 26,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
IMPORTANT
102
& RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
58 PETER MCINTYRE (1910 - 95)
Signed $12,000 - 16,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
103
59 PETER MCINTYRE (1910 - 95)
Untitled, Boy on Beach Oil pastel on paper 58 x 74
Matukituki Valley
Oil on Belgian linen 76 x 152
Signed $40,000 - 60,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Christchurch
IMPORTANT
104
& RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
60 TIM WILSON (1954 - 2020)
105
Oil on canvas 73 x 50
Signed & dated 1967
$5,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Oil on board 72.5 x 53.5
Signed & dated 1971
$5,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED
One Man Exhibition, John Leech Gallery
June/July 1973
106 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
61 DOUGLAS MACDIARMID (1922 - 2020)
Night Window I
62 DOUGLAS MACDIARMID (1922 - 2020)
St Merri II
107
63 PETRUS VAN DER VELDEN (1837 - 1913)
Sumner Road
Oil on canvas 91 x 116.2
$15,000 - 25,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Dunedin
Formally in the collection of G. van Asch, Christchurch held in van Asch family collection until 1974
Private Collection, Wellington
ILLUSTRATED
Ref: Auckland City Art Gallery, 1959, Exhibition catalogue p 24
Illustrated p 123 van der Velden Volume II
A Catalogue Raisonné, T L Rodney Wilson, Chancery Chambers Publishers, Sydney, 1979
Cat. no. 2.2.2.3
Illustrated
Petrus van der Velden, Road work, Sumner, Charcoal
Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū; presented by the family of A. F. Nicoll, 1960
108 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
109
Mount
Watercolour
Signed
$10,000 - 15,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Coromandel & View of Kahurangi Valley, Pair c. 1870
Oil on canvas 39.5 x 64.5
Both Signed & dated 1872
$20,000 - 40,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland since 1920
110 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
64 JOHN BARR CLARK HOYTE (1835 - 1913)
Egmont, Maori Camp
36 x 52.5
65 CHARLES BLOMFIELD (1848 - 1926)
111
66 ARTIST UNKNOWN
A Summer’s Day at the Antipodes, Auckland NZ
December 1869
Watercolour 20 x 42.5
Inscribed
$4,000 - 6,000
67 ARCHIBALD FRANK NICOLL (1866 - 1953)
The North End of Caroline Bay, Timaru
Oil on canvas board 30 x 40
Signed
$2,000 - 4,000
68 EDWARD FRISTROM (1864 - 1950)
New South Wales Coast, Australia
Oil on canvas board 23 x 32
Signed
$2,500 - 3,500
69 CHARLES DECIMUS BARRAUD (1822 - 1897)
Te Terata Rotomahana
Watercolour 24 x 34.5
Signed, inscribed & dated 1879
$3,000 - 5,000
70 JOHN BARR CLARK HOYTE (1835 - 1913)
Mount Egmont from Lake Mangamahoe
Watercolour 25 x 45
Signed
$3,000 - 5,000
112 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
66
67
68
113 69 70
71 MARGARET OLROG STODDART (1865 - 1934)
Still Life of Roses
Watercolour 44 x 56
Signed $15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
114
& RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
IMPORTANT
Untitled, Spring
Watercolour 25 x 34
Signed & dated 1903
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Rotorua
115
72 MARGARET OLROG STODDART (1865 - 1934)
Flowers
73 GARTH TAPPER (1927 - 99)
The Public Bar
Oil on board 38.5 x 49
Signed & dated 1975
Inscription verso
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wellington
The Trial, From the Law and its People Series
Oil on board 28 x 42.5
Signed $12,000 - 16,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
75 GARTH TAPPER (1927 - 99)
Saturday Morning
Oil on ply 31 x 39
Signed
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wellington
116 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
74 GARTH TAPPER (1927 - 99)
73
117 74 75
Oil on canvas 45.5 x 55
Signed & inscribed Taupo Landscape verso
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
118 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
76 PETER MCINTYRE (1910 - 95)
Taupo Landscape
Family Portrait
Oil on canvas 63x77
Signed & dated 1930
Female portrait
$4,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
119
77
WILLIAM HENRY ALLEN (1894 -1988)
painted verso
Female portrait painted verso
120 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024 78 79
78 FELIX KELLY (1914 - 94)
Harbour and Terrace
Oil on board 17 x 32
Signed
$3,000 - 5,000
79 FELIX KELLY (1914 - 94)
Untitled, Landscape
Gouache on paper 29 x 40
Signed & dated 1945
$2,500 - 3,500
80
80 CECIL FLETCHER KELLY (1878 - 1954)
Cornelissen of Holborn, 22 Great Queen street, London (Artist Colourman) c.1920
Oil on board 45 x 34
Signed
$2,000 - 3,000
This famed colourman artist supply shop was established by Louis Cornelissen after he had left Paris following the 1848 Revolution. It supplied artists with canvases, brushes, oils and pigments, watercolour paints, varnishes. Artists such as Whistler and Bacon purchased their supplies from Cornelissen’s, as did Cecil F Kelly.
121
Loading, Concarneau
Oil on board 20 x 25
Signed $8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
122 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
81 SYDNEY LOUGH THOMPSON (1877 - 1973)
Oil
Signed $9,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
123
82
FRANCIS MCCRACKEN (1879 - 1959)
View From Studio, Hart Street, Edinburgh
on canvas 70 x 75
124 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024 83
83
QUENTIN MACFARLANE (1935 - 2019)
Pegasus Bay
Acrylic on canvas 149 x 110
Signed verso
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Christchurch
84
QUENTIN MACFARLANE (1935 - 2019)
Abstract
Acrylic on canvas 76 x 61
Signed
$2,000 - 3,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Christchurch
85
QUENTIN MACFARLANE (1935 - 2019)
Contrast - Athens
Acrylic on canvas 49 x 69.5
Signed $2,000 - 3,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Christchurch
84
125
85
Port Theme Structure No. 4
Metal, resin, wood sculpture 111 x 82
Signed, inscribed Port Theme Structure No. 4 verso
$1,500 - 2,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
126 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
86 ARTHUR DAGLEY (1919 - 98)
87 ROY GOOD (b. 1945)
Diamond Series No.15
Acrylic on gesso on board 91 x 91
Signed, inscribed Diamond Series No.15 & dated 2003 verso
$6,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
EXHIBITED ARTIS Gallery, Auckland
127
128 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024 3 88 89 90
91
88
IAN SCOTT (1945 - 2013)
Untitled
Acrylic on canvas 41.5 x 33.5
Signed & dated ‘75 verso
$3,000 - 4,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Cambridge
89 RICHARD KILLEEN (b. 1946)
Ladybird Comb
Unique pigment ink jet print on paper 59 x 59
Signed & dated 2003
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wanganui
EXHIBITED
Brooke Gifford Gallery, 2003
90 MAX GIMBLETT (b. 1935)
Everlastingness
Pencil, ink, acrylic polymer, oil size, Japanese leaf on Arches watercolour paper 57 x 75
Signed & dated 2010/11
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Cambridge
91 RALPH HOTERE (1931 - 2013)
London, 1988
Foil collage and pastel on paper 35.5 x 25
Signed, inscribed London & dated ‘88
$12,000 - 16,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
129
130 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024 92 93
94
Houses at Mangonui
Oil on board 35 x 43.5
Signed & dated 1968
$5,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Collection of the Artist, by descent
Karekare Sunset
Pastel on paper 27 x 40
Signed & dated 1989
$3,000 - 5,000
PROVENANCE
Collection of the Artist, by descent
Oil on board 90 x 74.5
Signed
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Christchurch
131
92 PETER SIDDELL (1935 - 2011)
93 PETER SIDDELL (1935 - 2011)
94 HELEN STEWART (1900 - 83) Land & Sea
132 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024
96
95
95 RUDI GOPAS (1913 - 83)
Second Wharf at Kaikoura 1958
Watercolour & ink on paper 50 x 67
Signed & dated 1958
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
96 JENNY DOLEZEL (b.1964)
Kisses For You (fire burns inside me)
Oil, oil pastel and collage on paper 40 x 59.5
Signed, inscribed & dated 1990
$10,000 - 15,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
97 PAT HANLY (1932 - 2004)
Winter’s Day Rain
Watercolour & pastel on paper 51 x 51
Signed, inscribed Winter’s Day Rain & dated 1974
$14,000 - 18,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Australia
97
133
134 IMPORTANT & RARE ART 6:00pm Tuesday 26 March 2024 98 99
Untitled
Oil on canvas 37 x 59.5
Signed & dated 1925
$8,000 - 12,000
Whangaroa, Dawn & Dusk
Watercolour 25 x 44
Signed $5,000 - 8,000
Mt Cook
Oil on canvas 60 x 50
Signed
$4,000 - 6,000
Untitled
Watercolour 52.5 x 38
Signed & dated 1900
$4,000 - 6,000
135
98 CHARLES BLOMFIELD (1848 - 1926)
99 JOHN BARR CLARK HOYTE (1835 - 1913)
100 LAURENCE WILLIAM WILSON (1851 - 1912)
101 JOHN BARR CLARK HOYTE (1835 - 1913)
100
101
