IMPORTANT & RARE ART
Auction 6:30pm Tuesday 29 July 2025
DON BINNEY
Lot 42
GUY NGAN
Colours No.11
IMPORTANT & RARE ART
29 07 25
AUCTION
6:30pm Tuesday 29 July
International Art Centre
202 Parnell Rd, Parnell, Auckland
VIEWING
Wednesday 23 July 9am - 5.30pm
Thursday 24 July 9am - 5.30pm
Friday 25 July 9am - 5pm
Saturday 26 July 10am - 4pm
Sunday 27 July 11am - 4pm
Monday 28 July 9am - 5.30pm
Tuesday 29 July 9am - 5.30pm
LOCATION/ENQUIRIES
International Art Centre 202 Parnell Road Auckland New Zealand
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Important & Rare Art Highlights April
1. Grahame Sydney, Brass Monkey Hill, 2003
2. Gottfried Lindauer, Miriam Partridge Realised $109,147
3. Gretchen Albrecht, Winged Skyfall, 1971/73 Realised $29,106
4. Paul Dibble, Small Comb Model Realised $18,191
5. Raymond Ching, Flotilla! Realised $175,848 Artist Record
6. Kushana Bush, Sleepers with Lobsters, From All Things to All Men Series, 2012 Realised $39,414
Artist Record
7. Jacqueline Fahey, A Funny Thing Happened On K’Rd, 1984 Realised $43,659
8. Ann Robinson, Side Carved Flax Pod, Steel Blue Realised $42,446
9. Flora Scales, Untitled [Mousehole, Cornwall c.1950 - 54] Realised $33,957
Artist Record
Lot 29
FLORA SCALES
St Tropez, Farm Buildings and Harbour
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BUYERS PREMIUM 18.5% plus GST
1 DON BINNEY (1940 - 2012)
Swoop of the Kotare, Wainamu
Pastel collage & acrylic on paper 42 x 29 cm
Signed & dated 1979 lower left
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from the artist
2 DON BINNEY (1940 - 2012)
Swoop of the Kotare, Wainamu
Silkscreen, second edition 36/55 66 x 48 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 1986
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Accompanied by original COA
Boy and Shell
Bronze, 1/5 28 x 8 cm
Signed & editioned
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Lake Ohau - Arrangement with Eels and Branches
Beech and Mistletoe
Steel, cast bronze & copper 90 x 122 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 2024 verso
$12,000 - 18,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
3 TERRY STRINGER (b. 1946)
4 BING DAWE (b. 1952)
Harbour
Oil (alkyd) on linen canvas 36 x 25.5 cm
Signed lower left; inscribed verso
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from International Art Centre, Contemporary & Collectable, Auckland, 29/08/2013, Lot No. 21
6 STANLEYPALMER(b.1936)
Three Trees - Chathams
Oilonlinen70x120cmSigned &dated2024lowerright
$14,000-18,000
PROVENANCE
PrivateCollection
5 PETER SIDDELL (1935 - 2011)
7 PATRICK HAYMAN (1915 - 88)
The Door to Infinity Oil on metal and wood construction
23 x 30 x 16 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 1980 verso
$3,000 - 5,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
ILLUSTRATED
Patrick Hayman - Visionary Artist, Mel Gooding, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives, 2005, p.89
8 JOHN WEEKS (1886 - 1965)
Rising Forms
Tempera on board 55 x 29 cm
Signed lower left
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
9 GRAHAM FLETCHER (b. 1969)
Night Journey (Blue Head & Apples)
Oil on canvas 71 x 92 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 2020 verso
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
EXHIBITED
Night Journal, Graham Fletcher, Gow Langsford Gallery, 28 October - 21 November 2020
10 RALPH HOTERE (1931 - 2013)
Lo Negro Sobre Lo Oro (The Black Over the Gold) Acrylic, pastel & gold leaf on paper 76 x 56 cm
Signed & dated 1992 lower left
$35,000 - 45,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch
11 GORDON WALTERS (1919 - 95)
Untitled 28.5.1985
Acrylic on paper 53 x 38.5 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 1985
$15,000 - 25,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
12 IAN SCOTT (1945 - 2013)
Lattice #66, 1979
Acrylic on canvas 114 x 114 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated October 1979 verso
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
ILLUSTRATED
Ian Scott: Lattices, Edward Hanfling, Ferner Galleries, 2005, p.48
13 FATU FEU’U (b. 1946)
Ulu Fafa 1998
Mixed media on loose canvas 149 x 178 cm
Signed & dated 1998 lower left
$10,000 - 15,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
14 PARATENE MATCHITT (1933 - 2021)
Heart of Steel from Te Wepu Series, 2004
Marine grade stainless steel with base
150 x 130 cm
Signed & dated 2004 on base
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Hawkes Bay
Acquired from the artist
15 TERRY STRINGER (b. 1946)
The Nature of Poetry
Bronze, A/P 51.5 x 14 cm
Signed & dated 2006
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
16 KARL MAUGHAN (b. 1964)
Avocet
Oil on canvas 152 x 152 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 2003 verso
$30,000 - 40,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, 2004
17
BANKSY (British b. 1974)
Choose Your Weapon - Dark Orange
Screenprint, edition 8/25, 70 x 70 cm
Signed & editioned
$100,000 - 150,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Purchased by the current owner from Castle Gallery, Ireland, October 2013
Accompanied by certificate of authenticity from Pest Control, signed & dated
Banksy, the enigmatic British street artist, has built an extraordinary reputation for challenging social norms and exposing uncomfortable truths through sharp, visually arresting works. His art, both playful and provocative, cuts to the heart of global conversations about consumerism, authority, war and activism.
Choose Your Weapon first appeared in 2010 on a wall outside London’s Grange Pub in Bermondsey. Shortly after its appearance, the mural was boarded up, only to re-emerge behind perspex, framed and protected. Over time, even this protective layer became obscured by posters and advertising flyers, an ironic erasure for a work so invested in public visibility and resistance. Later that same year, Banksy’s publisher, Pictures On Walls, released a limited print edition of Choose Your Weapon, prompting fervent demand. Fans queued in freezing winter temperatures for hours to secure a print, with the queue famously spiralling out of control. In response, Banksy issued a special queue jumper edition in grey for those who had missed out.
The Choose Your Weapon series was issued in fifteen different colourways, each in an edition of just 25, making it the lowest commercial edition run Banksy has ever produced. The work presents a hooded figure, an anonymous symbol of Britain’s disaffected youth, with one hand in his pocket, the other holding the leash of a barking dog, rendered in a minimalist style that directly references Keith Haring’s iconic Barking Dog motif from the 1980s. Banksy’s use of Haring’s simplified white outline creates a stark visual contrast to the hyper-realistic figure of the man, while simultaneously invoking street culture’s lineage of subversion.
Happy Choppers also draws from Banksy’s signature approach to visual irony. Originally appearing as a mural outside London’s Whitecross Street Market in Islington in 2002, Happy Choppers quickly became one of Banksy’s most recognisable motifs. The screenprint offered here was produced for Santa’s Ghetto, Banksy’s temporary gallery installation on Oxford Street in 2003, which he conceived as a protest against the commercialisation of Christmas. Banksy’s helicopters, often revisited in his work, have become synonymous with his critique of militarism and state-sanctioned violence.
Napalm, one of Banksy’s most powerful and unsettling works, offers a searing indictment of consumer culture and Western desensitisation to violence. The image draws directly from the harrowing Vietnam War photograph The Terror of War, taken by photojournalist Nick Ut in 1972, which captured the agony of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a young girl fleeing a napalm attack. Banksy’s rendition places the terrified child between two smiling figures of Western commercial dominance: Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse and McDonald’s Ronald McDonald. By inserting these cheerful corporate mascots into this scene Banksy juxtaposes consumer innocence with military brutality, forcing viewers to confront the uncomfortable alliances between commerce, war and cultural consumption.
Presented here is a rare opportunity to acquire key works that not only define the artist’s career but continue to resonate with profound relevance in today’s world.
18 BANKSY (British b. 1974)
Screenprint, edition 61/150 47 x 68.5 cm
Signed, editioned & dated 2005
$30,000 - 40,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Accompanied by certificate of authenticity from Pest Control, signed & dated
19 BANKSY (British b. 1974)
Screenprint, edition 514/750, 70 x 50 cm
Signed in plate, editioned lower right
$30,000 - 40,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Accompanied by certificate of authenticity from Pest Control, signed & dated
Napalm
Happy Choppers
20 PAUL DIBBLE (1943 - 2023)
The Orator, 1999
Bronze, unique 51.5 x 23.5 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 1999
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from International Art Centre, The Paul & Kerry Barber Collection with Important & Rare Art, Auckland, 23/10/2019, Lot No. 9
EXHIBITED
Revisiting Formalism: from the workshop, Bowen Gallery, Wellington, 2 - 15 May 1999
Balanced Gestures, Bowen Gallery, Wellington, 28 February - 11 March 2000
21 GUY NGAN (1926 - 2017)
Oceania No. 4 1975
Oil on board 121.5 x 80.5 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 1975 lower right
Original artist label affixed verso
$50,000 - 75,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from artist
22 REUBEN PATERSON (b. 1973)
Untitled, 2009
Glitter on canvas 61 x 51 cm
Signed & dated 2009 verso
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Silich Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
23 MICHAEL PAREKŌWHAI (b. 1968)
The Bosom of Abraham
Screenprinted vinyl on fluorescent light housing
130 x 22 cm
$18,000 - 25,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
24
BUCK NIN (1942 - 1996)
The Banner Oil on board 140 x 125.5 cm
Signed & dated 1976 lower right
$30,000 - 40,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from the artist
A foundational figure in the development of contemporary Māori art, Buck Nin was a prolific painter, educator and arts advocate whose contribution to New Zealand’s cultural landscape was profound and wide-ranging. The Banner (1976) exemplifies Nin’s mature practice, developed over decades of painting and teaching and shaped by a career that spanned both artistic and educational spheres.
Trained at Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland and then at the University of Canterbury’s Ilam School of Fine Arts under expressionist painter Rudi Gopas, Nin developed a painterly language that drew on customary Māori motifs. In The Banner, these visual traditions are reinterpreted through the lens of contemporary painting. The composition’s central kōwhaiwhai form breaks from its traditional architectural setting, appearing suspended in a brooding sky. The landscape, spare and suggestive, evokes the spiritual and physical significance of place, anchoring Nin’s exploration of land, memory and belonging.
Alongside his painting practice, Nin was deeply committed to arts education. After graduating in 1966, he taught at Bay of Islands College and later at the Church College of New Zealand in Hamilton, where he remained for two decades. His teaching career ran parallel with his work as an artist. That same year, he co-curated New Zealand Māori Culture and the Contemporary Scene at Canterbury Museum, one of the first major exhibitions to present contemporary Māori art within an institutional context. The exhibition toured internationally, marking a turning point in the visibility of Māori contemporary practice.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Nin remained active as both an artist and administrator, contributing to more than 100 exhibitions and completing postgraduate degrees in arts administration in Hawaii and Texas. He was instrumental in the establishment of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa in 1984, a legacy of his belief in the importance of accessible, culturally grounded education.
26 FIONA PARDINGTON (b. 1961)
Broken Hearted Heitiki from the Burnet Collection, Whanganui Museum, 2008
Silver gelatin print, edition 2/5 57.5 x 48.5 cm
Signed verso on artist label
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Female Huia, Canterbury Museum, 2021
Inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper, framed in hand lacquered black Goldie moulding with AR70 non-reflective museum glass, edition 5/10
144.5 x 108.5 cm
Signed verso on artist label
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
25 FIONA PARDINGTON (b. 1961)
GORDON WALTERS (1919 - 95)
Koru in Black, White and Ochre
Gouache on paper 30.5 x 23 cm
Signed & dated 14.9.73 verso
Dated 14.9.73 upper right
$35,000 - 45,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from Petar/James Gallery, Auckland, 1973
Born in Wellington in 1919, Gordon Walters was drawn to art from a young age, pursuing part-time studies at Wellington Technical College while working as a commercial artist in the late 1930s. His early exposure to European modernist theory, particularly through the writings of Roger Fry and Herbert Read and his encounters with Oceanic and nonWestern art in the Dominion Museum shaped his artistic worldview. These formative years set the stage for his evolving interest in geometric abstraction and the visual languages of indigenous cultures.
A pivotal figure in Walters’ development was New Zealand artist, Theo Schoon, who introduced Walters to the abstraction of European artists like Paul Klee, Joan Miró and Piet Mondrian. Walters’ artistic trajectory took him to Sydney, Melbourne and Europe, where he studied abstract painting and encountered the works of Mondrian, Victor Vasarely, and Auguste Herbin. He returned to New Zealand in the early 1950s and, in relative isolation from the international art world, began his most significant period of experimentation. Walters’ gouache works from this time, executed with precise, hard-edged forms and minimal gesture, demonstrate his early mastery of visual balance, rhythm and counterpoint between figure and ground.
By the mid-1950s, Walters began his intensive investigation of the koru form. Influenced by the geometric abstraction of European artists and guided by his own unique vision, he transformed the koru from its organic origins into a regimented, highly structured motif that generated dynamic visual tensions between positive and negative space. His refined use of repetition, scale and contrast allowed him to create images that pulse with energy.
From his first exhibition of koru paintings at Auckland’s New Vision Gallery in 1966, Walters steadily gained critical acclaim. His work was initially associated with the optical effects of Pop art, though his sources and intentions were distinct.
Throughout his career, he continued to refine his palette, experiment with colour combinations and push the formal possibilities of his signature motif.
The importance of Walters’ work has been recognised through major retrospective exhibitions, including Gordon Walters: A Retrospective at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 1983 and Parallel Lines: Gordon Walters in Context in 1994. Koru in Black, White and Ochre presents collectors with a rare opportunity to acquire an exemplary work by an artist whose disciplined visual language left an indelible mark on the history of modern art in New Zealand.
Marti Friedlander, Gordon Walters, Studio in Christchurch, E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, on loan from the Gerrard and Marti Friedlander Charitable Trust, 2002, (Accession No RC2007/11/7/194)
ROGER MORTIMER (b. 1956)
Houhora 2, 2020
Jacquard weaving, cotton and synthetic
170 x 180 cm
Initialled, stitched lower right
$10,000 - 15,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
EXHIBITED
Houhora, Föenander Galleries, Auckland, 2020
ILLUSTRATED
Apocrypha, The Maps of Roger Mortimer, Index, Auckland, August 2021, p.144
Roger Mortimer is celebrated as one of New Zealand’s most distinctive and thought-provoking contemporary artists, known for his remarkable ability to weave together mythology, theology, history and cartography into richly layered visual narratives. In Houhora 2, Mortimer turns to the medium of Jacquard weaving, a natural evolution of his practice that seamlessly aligns with his longstanding engagement with the medieval aesthetic.
Mortimer’s visual language draws heavily from the illuminated manuscripts and cosmological maps of medieval Europe, specifically those inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. His tapestries and paintings present dense, allegorical worlds where historical and mythological figures collide with the coastlines and waterways of New Zealand, creating what has been described as an allegorical scrambling of time and geography that pushes at the limits of the human imagination
Mortimer’s tapestry practice, in particular, has been a significant development, adding a tactile dimension to his exploration of time, myth and place. The use of textile, with its deep historical roots in storytelling and domestic craft, furthers the layers of meaning in his work, reinforcing his interest in how histories are recorded, remembered and retold.
Houhora 2 is an exemplary work from Mortimer’s textile oeuvre, a beautifully composed, intellectually rich and visually captivating piece that continues the artist’s exploration of New Zealand’s coastal edges as sites of myth, history and human drama.
29
FLORA SCALES (1887 - 1985)
St Tropez, Farm Buildings and Harbour Oil on canvas 37.8 x 45.8 cm
Signed & dated 1939 lower right
Inscribed St Tropez lower left
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from the artist
EXHIBITED
Flora Scales, The Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, 16 November 2018 - 27 January, 2019
ILLUSTRATED
Flora Scales, The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, 2018, inside and opposite front cover (colour)
Painted in 1939, St Tropez, Farm Buildings and Harbour reflects Flora Scales’ deep engagement with the luminous southern French landscape she had come to know intimately during repeated summer visits throughout the 1930s.
Scales first visited St Tropez in the early 1930s, lodging at a pension, in the house of Madame Coccoz, 76 rue Sibilli, Place des Lices. She painted outdoors, inspired by the vivid Mediterranean light, the ochre and green tones of the land, and the rhythm of village life. She recalled the journey south by train in a letter to Linda Gill as most wonderful, describing the landscape as one where farmhouses rise straight out of the grapevines which are sometimes quite yellow.
During the 1931 season, Scales worked alongside fellow New Zealanders Frances Hodgkins, Maude Burge and Gwen Knight forming a creative network that shaped her development. It was during this period that she first encountered Edmund D. Kinzinger whose teaching, focused on colour, spatial structure and abstraction would prove pivotal to her later practice.
St Tropez, Farm Buildings and Harbour is a remarkable painting, rich in painterly confidence, expressive nuance and historical significance. It reflects the artistic freedom Scales found in southern France and her deepening engagement with European modernism. Strong formal elements and gestural brushwork combine to create a balanced, lyrical composition. It captures both the essence of a place and the broader modernist interest in form, light and structure. Like much of Scales’ work from this period St Tropez, Farm Buildings and Harbour reflects a personal, painterly response to environment, quietly modern and deeply felt.
Flora Scales painting outdoors, Pahautea, Wairarapa, New Zealand, April 1906
FRANCES HODGKINS (1869 - 1947)
East Anglian Farm, 1939
Gouache on paper 39 x 51 cm
Signed, inscribed No.3 & dated 1939
$35,000 - 45,000
PROVENANCE
Mr John Moores, Liverpool, England
Sotheby’s, London, England, 14 Jul 1971, Lot no. 78
Private Collection
Acquired from Jonathan Grant Gallery, Auckland, Oct 2000
EXHIBITION
Gouaches and Pencil Drawings, Lefevre Gallery, London, 4 April - 27 Apr 1940
NOTES
Other Titles - Dorset Farm No 3, Dorset Farm
CATALOGUE NUMBER
FH1156 - https://completefranceshodgkins.com/ objects/26541/east-anglian-farm
Early on in her painting career, while still living in Dunedin, Frances Hodgkins displayed a keen eye for architectural detail, accurately rendering stone barns and waterwheels; vernacular houses with pitched roofs and tall chimneys, or vertical tongue and groove outhouses with missing window panes — all indicative of human and animal habitation. This interest in architecture developed further once she moved to Europe in 1901, whether focusing on the highly detailed timber and lathe buildings in France or the block like plaster structures she found early on in Morocco, or again in Spain in the 1930s. However, it was only from the late 1920s onwards, that buildings became the actual subject of particular paintings, rather than the nuanced backdrop to people and objects.
By the end of the 1930s, Hodgkins had developed a complex style, often deconstructing buildings to focus on their individual elements. East Anglian Farm, 1939 was exhibited by that title in 1940 at St George’s Gallery, London, although at some point it also was identified as Dorset Farm. Both locations were particularly relevant to her subject matter. Dorset was where Hodgkins was mainly based from 1937 onwards, but East Anglia, or specifically Suffolk, was the home of her close friends and fellow artists Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett Haines, where she was able to enjoy delicious food (Lett was an excellent and creative cook), the pleasure of Cedric’s beautiful garden, and lively and stimulating conversation. As Hodgkins didn’t keep a diary, we have to rely on her letters to trace her whereabouts, which are helpful when she is based somewhere for some time, but not necessarily indicative of places she merely visited for a week
Frances Hodgkins 1939
EH McCormick Papers, EH McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Linda Gill, 2015, photographer Jane Saunders, (Accession No RC2015/4/7/24 )
or two. And with her peripatetic nature Hodgkins took every opportunity to venture out into the countryside in a constant quest for new subject matter. It was only with the arrival of WWII that she was forced to make a more permanent base in Corfe Castle, Dorset.
East Anglian Farm is painted rapidly but with a remarkably steady brush. The radiant skies of high summer are suggested by a pellucid blue wash outlining anamorphic clouds that bear little resemblance to natural phenomena. Although often attracted to the discarded piles of detritus that were a feature of certain farmyards, here the buildings themselves are broken up into their respective parts, as clusters of steeply pitched roofs, and distinct means of wall construction. Horizontal boards are outlined in blue, serving as a bulwark to a pebbled wall suggestive of knapped flint, which are a common feature of traditional buildings in a number of England’s southern counties. These are balanced in turn by a section of red brick. Behind the central structure another building on the left consists simply of bold outlines in red ochre and black, bracketed on the far right by another farm structure that is more readily identified as a building. You can sense Hodgkins’ enjoyment in her mark making, each brushstroke translating what she observes into something akin to an abstracted patchwork. It is as if the compilation of walls and roofs have become untethered from their foundations and freed to move like dancers on a stage, in an interpretation full of verve and humour.
MARY KISLER
31
PETER SIDDELL (1935 - 2011)
City with Towered Houses, 1974
Oil on board 120 x 80 cm
Signed & dated 1974 lower right
$150,000 - 200,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from Peter Webb Gallery, Auckland, 1974
Peter Siddell stands among New Zealand’s most celebrated realist painters, renowned for his meticulously detailed depictions of suburban architecture and landscape. City with Towered Houses (1974) captures the hallmarks of Siddell’s distinctive visual language. Painted at a formative moment in his career, this work reflects his singular ability to merge observation, memory and invention into a quietly compelling atmosphere.
Peter Siddell’s City with Towered Houses is a masterful example of the artist’s ability to transform the familiar into the uncanny. Painted in his signature hyperreal style, the work presents a meticulously rendered Auckland suburb, its rows of early 20th-century villas nestled into the lush contours of a hillside beneath a vast, brooding sky.
The architecture is instantly recognisable, fretwork verandahs, bay windows and turreted rooftops. The dense layering of bush and homes leads the eye upward to a golden hill, scattered with trees and crowned by a lone white villa. His painted environments carry a heightened, dreamlike stillness. Devoid of people, power lines, or modern noise, Siddell instills a quiet contemplative air. The houses become more than dwellings; they become repositories of memory and mystery.
The painting dates from an important period in Siddell’s practice as he shifted away from illustration toward the metaphysical landscapes that would come to define his career. Works from the 1970s, such as this one, mark the development of his distinctive voice and his deepening interest in architecture as a vessel for atmosphere and mystery.
City with Towered Houses stands as a quintessential example of Siddell’s early mature style, technically assured, evocatively beautiful and unmistakably rooted in a New Zealand vernacular. Peter Siddell once said, he sought to create a still image that lingers in the memory. An effect that has clearly been achieved in this composition.
32 DON BINNEY (1940 - 2012)
Fatbird II
Oil on board 120.5 x 62 cm
Signed & dated 1964 lower left
Queen Elizabeth Arts Council Label verso
$500,000 - 750,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
EXHIBITED
Recent Paintings, Don Binney, Ikon Gallery, Auckland, 1964
Contemporary Painting in New Zealand, Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, Commonwealth Institute, London, 1965
Not only was Don Binney a bird-watcher, he was, from an early age, a thinker about birds. For him, birdlife was a means of exploring/entering into the wider physical environment, with its layering of cultural and mythical significance. Birds were also a significant part of his personal story—firstly, as a boy-ornithologist then as a habitué of Te Henga/Bethells Beach on Auckland’s West Coast and an artist-traveller around Aotearoa.
Binney’s greatest innovation as a painter was the way he married the forms of birdlife with a modernist visual language which had its origins in his studies in the Design Department at Elam School of Fine Arts. First exhibited at the Ikon Gallery in 1964, Fatbird II is an exemplary work from the greatest period of his art, the early 1960s until the early 1970s. Around the time of the Ikon Gallery exhibition, he produced a number of related works in which stylised birds of two different species were brought together in a single scene. In Fatbird II, a native wood pigeon, kererū, swoops over two fatbirds—as the New Zealand tomtit was sometimes affectionately called at the time (the Māori name miromiro and that of the South Island variety, ngirungiru, have only entered wide use in recent years).
In an unpublished memoir, Binney keenly observed in prose, as he did in paint, how in 1963 the yellow-breasted bird ‘arrived’ in his art-making, with its ‘bright eye as jet as its upper plumage, endearingly rotund… With the ensuing year their squat open-beaked profiles contrasted their colour/tone against implied habitat, in oil on board at my Grafton studio.’i
His series of Fatbird paintings (1964-65) includes two horizontal format works both titled simply Fatbird. ii In these, the bird’s body is highly stylised, with sleek,
sharp wings and beak. The shape of the birds is wittily reminiscent of the lightbulb, pear and egg that Binney had shown considerable skill at drawing while studying at Elam.
Another painting from the series was also titled, probably belatedly, Fatbird II. Featuring an airborne bird above a seated schoolgirl, the work was originally given the regrettable title Two Fat Birds.iii A similar vertical format was also used in Fatbird III, which features two fatbirds mating.iv Eschewing conventional notions of avian beauty, there is a palpable joy and playfulness—a mischief, even— in the way Binney handles the large head, short beak and general demeanour of his chosen subject.
Bearing the distinctive yellow chest-colouring of the South Island variant, the two males in Fatbird II face alternatively right and left, giving the composition a criss-cross rhythm. Binney’s carefully judged interweaving of bird forms and other elements is not only a formal strategy - it also implies a holist relationship between his bird-subjects, their ground and the space around them. Both fatbirds are cropped by the sides of the painting—a radical departure in terms of traditional ornithological painting. Dominating the sky-space, Binney’s kererū is more like a cloud than a bird, its beak, wing and tail penetrating the picture frame on three sides.
While, in Māori tradition, the kererū was associated with guardianship and was a symbolic link between the physical and spirit worlds, the miromiro/ngirungiru was considered a harbinger of good news. Both birds were ascribed varying degrees of sacredness/tapu. In this scene, the flying bird is presented as a benevolent force—unlike the hovering bird of prey in Binney’s ‘Waiti’ paintings from around the same time.
With its crepuscular landforms and dim, otherworldly light, out of which the birds’ plumage radiates, the work is imbued with an allegorical or mythical feeling. Like much of Don Binney’s work around this time, it is a paean to the landforms, light and mood of his beloved Te Henga and the adjacent Waitakere Ranges. It also articulates his fascination for, and deep affinity with, both high-flying and bush/ground-dwelling birds.
GREGORY O’BRIEN
i. Unpublished autobiography, in the artist’s personal papers.
ii. Don Binney—Flightpath, Gregory O’Brien, Auckland: Auckland University Press 2023, p104
iii. Fat bird II/Two Fat Birds is reproduced in Don Binney—Flightpath. While Two Fat Birds was included in the exhibition ‘Eight New Zealand Artists’ which toured Australia in 1965, as stated in the book’s chronology, it was in fact the earlier Fat Bird II—the work reproduced here—that was included in ‘Contemporary Painting in New Zealand’ which was shown at the Commonwealth Gallery in London that same year. The current work still bears the label from that showing on verso.
iv. See Don Binney—Flightpath, p365
33
FELIX KELLY (1914 - 94)
‘African Capriccio’ Post Office, Sierra Leone
Oil on board 163 x 233 cm
Signed & dated 1966 lower right
$60,000 - 80,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, United Kingdom
Phillips, London, 26 January 1988, Lot 77
Private Collection
Acquired from International Art Centre, Important & Rare Art, Auckland, 19/05/2020, Lot No. 43
Felix Kelly is best known for his ‘house portraits’ –unpeopled, slightly eerie, depictions of Britain’s stately houses that belie his middle-class Auckland origins. Kelly had left New Zealand in 1935, never to return, for a life hobnobbing with the upper classes, a sought-after figure at countryhouse weekends.
Pretty shortly, he was also sought after as a painter, with exhibitions at fashionable dealer galleries in London’s Mayfair. Kelly knew how to ‘put himself about’, receiving commissions from a range of clients, both private and commercial. In the late 1950s and again in the ‘60s, a diamond company invited him to undertake a ‘painting safari’, as he called it, to West Africa as research for a set of murals for their London boardroom.
These and associated pictures combine vestiges of industrial machinery with lush greenery, the occasional brightly-clad human figure, and objects from Kelly’s personal catalogue of strange devices: limp cables, striped poles and chimneys, defunct gas standards, a red pillar box – last gasps of a retreating empire.
DON BASSETT
Charles Frederick Goldie
Few artists have left as profound a mark on New Zealand’s cultural and visual history as Charles Frederick Goldie. His deeply emotive portraits of Māori rangatira, tohunga and kaumātua stand as some of the most recognisable and sought-after works in the nation’s art canon. Across his prolific career, Goldie combined exceptional technical skill, Parisian academic training and an enduring commitment to his subjects, producing paintings that are as psychologically charged as they are historically significant.
Born in Auckland in 1870, Goldie was the second of eight children to David Goldie, a successful timber merchant and later the Mayor of Auckland, and Maria Partington. Named after his maternal grandfather, the builder of the landmark Auckland windmill, Goldie’s early talent for art was quickly recognised. After excelling at Auckland Grammar School and winning prizes at the Auckland Society of Arts, he began art studies under Louis John Steele, whose mentorship would profoundly influence the young artist.
With encouragement from Sir George Grey, and with his father’s permission, Goldie travelled to Paris in 1893 to study at the prestigious Académie Julian. There, under the guidance of leading Salon painters including William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Goldie immersed himself in rigorous academic training for over four years. He distinguished himself, winning studio prizes and a gold medal for life painting in 1896, and honed his skill through copying old masters in the Louvre and travelling throughout Europe. Goldie’s thorough academic grounding, rare among New Zealand artists of his generation, would underpin the extraordinary precision and clarity that came to define his work.
On his return to Auckland in 1898, Goldie briefly collaborated with his former teacher, Steele, on the large historical canvas The Arrival of the Māori in New Zealand, which now resides in Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. However, as Goldie’s reputation swiftly outgrew his mentor’s, their professional relationship fractured. By 1900, Goldie was working independently, rapidly gaining acclaim for his portraits of Māori elders and securing his position as Auckland’s preeminent portraitist.
Goldie’s first field trips to Rotorua in the early 1900s introduced him to many of his most significant sitters. Among them was Ahinata Te Rangitautini of Tūhourangi, who would later sit for Ho Koora Te Cigaretti, painted in 1917 when she was 102 years old, and included in this auction. These expeditions marked the beginning of Goldie’s enduring focus on elderly Māori with moko, whom he viewed as the living repositories of cultural knowledge and tradition. Goldie was driven by both an ethnographic impulse and a deep artistic respect for his subjects, whom he often painted multiple times over many years. His remarkable attention to detail and expressive brushwork combined to convey the mana and individuality of each sitter.
The powerful portrait An Aristocrat No. 3 (1920), another work offered in this auction, exemplifies Goldie’s mature style. The sitter, Kamaka Te Matehaere of Ngāti Maniapoto, posed for Goldie on multiple occasions. In this painting, the interplay of soft, ambient light and textured brushwork reveals the artist’s continued mastery and empathy for his subjects, even as he departed from the rigid formality of his earlier canvases.
Goldie’s extraordinary skill also extended beyond his Māori portraits. The Blind Model, Julian’s Academy, Paris 1897, painted during his formative years in Paris, offers a rare glimpse into his international training and early figure studies. This exceptional work, exhibited in Auckland Art Gallery’s landmark 1997 Goldie retrospective, is a significant reminder of his broader artistic capabilities and his place within the European tradition.
Throughout his career, Goldie’s meticulously crafted portraits were both celebrated and contested. The three works by Goldie presented in this auction, Ho Koora Te Cigaretti, The Blind Model and An Aristocrat No. 3, represent not only extraordinary technical achievement but also pivotal moments in the artist’s life and career. Each painting carries with it the weight of Goldie’s enduring artistic inquiry and his profound, if complex, place within New Zealand’s cultural memory.
CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE (1870 - 1947)
An Aristocrat No. 3 Kamaka te Matehaere (Aged 90 Years)
Oil on canvas 26 x 21 cm
Signed & dated 1920 upper left
$500,000 - 800,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from Webb’s, Fine New Zealand Paintings, Jewellery & Decorative Arts, Auckland, 11/12/2001, Lot No. 35
This exceptional portrait by Charles Frederick Goldie depicts the venerable Kamaka te Matehaere, a Rangatira of Ngāti Maniapoto, painted at age 90. Goldie painted Kamaka on at least four occasions between 1916 and 1921.
In this work light falls from the left, illuminating the sitter’s furrowed brow and moko with exquisite precision. The painting is a skilfull balance of psychological depth and formal structure. Elements such as the visible brushwork, ambient light and acute attention to the sitter’s physicality, mark this work as among Goldie’s finest.
An Aristocrat No. 3, is a testament to Goldie’s artistic legacy and a poignant portrait of a Māori Rangatira whose image has become embedded in the fabric of New Zealand’s visual history.
35
CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE (1870 -
1947)
Ho Koora Te Cigaretti, Portrait of Kapi Kapi
(Ahinata te Rangitautini) Aged 102 years
Oil on canvas 19.5 x 14.5 cm
Signed & dated 1917 upper left $400,000 - 600,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from International Art Centre, Important Early & Rare, Auckland, 29/10/2014, Lot No. 41
Charles Frederick Goldie is renowned for his exquisitely rendered images of Māori Rangatira and Kaumātua, painted with academic precision and deep reverence. Goldie’s Ho Koora Te Cigaretti is an intimate portrait of Ahinata Te Rangitautini, also known as Kapi Kapi, a respected Tuhourangi chieftainess of the Arawa people. Kapi Kapi is believed to be the only Māori woman Goldie painted with a full moko kauae, a fact that underscores her singular status in his body of work.
A survivor of the devastating 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera, Kapi Kapi was rescued during the eruption by famed guide Sophia Hinerangi, another of Goldie’s favoured subjects.
36
ALFRED SHARPE (1836 - 1908)
Skirt of Burnt Kauri Forest, Ruarangi
Watercolour 62.1 x 43.3 cm
Signed & dated 1879 lower left
$25,000 - 35,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Auckland City Art Gallery exhibition label affixed verso
EXHIBITED
Golden Evenings: The Art of Alfred Sharpe
Auckland City Art Gallery, 5 March - 16 May 1993
ILLUSTRATED
The Art of Alfred Sharpe, Roger Blackley,
Auckland City Art Gallery, 1992, p.44
37
ALFRED SHARPE (1836 - 1908)
Newmarket Gully 1879
Watercolour 54.2 x 40.6 cm
Signed & dated 1879 lower right
$16,000 - 22,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
EXHIBITED
Golden Evenings: The Art of Alfred Sharpe
Auckland City Art Gallery, 5 March - 16 May 1993
ILLUSTRATED
The Art of Alfred Sharpe, Roger Blackley, Auckland City Art Gallery, 1992, p.46
Sharpe often depicted native trees that had endured the effects of what he called “arboricidal profanations.” In this work, a resilient puriri tree in Newmarket Gully stands as a quiet symbol of survival and natural regeneration. Sharpe’s attention to damaged yet enduring landscapes reflects a deeper critique of colonial impact on the New Zealand environment. In the final essay of his Hints for Landscape Students in Watercolour, Sharpe wrote:
New Zealand is special and unique and therefore, it is altogether inexcusable to take liberties with it on pretence of improvement. Leave that to artists at home, who painting hackneyed scenery, depend greatly on novelty for effect, and strive to reproduce Nature here as she is, here her originality disappears before the combined effects of advancing civilisation and imported vermin and vegetation.
$30,000 - 40,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, United Kingdom by descent
38 JAN VAN HUYSUM (1682 - 1749)
Untitled, Pair
Oil on canvas 57 x 67.5 cm each
39 CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE (1870 - 1947)
The Blind Model, Julian’s Academy, Paris 1897
Oil on canvas 41 x 33 cm
Signed & dated Paris 1897 lower right
$80,000 - 120,000
PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from Olive Goldie by current owner, by descent
EXHIBITED
Goldie, Auckland Art Gallery, 28 June - 28 October 1997
Catalogue number 42
ILLUSTRATED
Goldie, Roger Blackley, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, David Bateman, 1997, pg.77
40 LEO BENSEMANN (1912 - 1986)
Port Hills
Oil on canvas board 23 x 35.5 cm
Signed & dated 1951 lower right
$15,000 - 25,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
An Estate Collection, Auckland
Port Hills, painted in 1951, is a fine example of Bensemann’s integral engagement with the Canterbury landscape where he lived for over fifty years.
Bensemann’s landscapes are celebrated for their stillness, architectural forms and geological detail. In Port Hills the artist applies his characteristic precision and tonal control to the soft contours of the hills that fringe Christchurch. The work resonates with a quiet monumentality, his carefully modulated palette and tight compositional structure revealing a painter equally attentive to the lyricism of form and the symbolic resonance of place.
Bensemann’s landscapes, particularly those of the Canterbury plains and the Takaka hills of his childhood, are amongst his most significant contributions to New Zealand art. In Port Hills, the balance between land and sky is perfectly poised, and his sharp attention to the silhouette and structure of the landscape recalls his parallel career in typography and graphic design.
A pivotal figure in the Caxton Press and a longstanding member of The Group, Bensemann’s influence rippled through the literary and visual arts communities of his time. His close associations with contemporaries such as Rita Angus, Denis Glover and Colin McCahon place him firmly within the core of New Zealand’s modernist movement.
Works by Bensemann, especially those from this period, rarely appear on the market and are largely held in family and private collections. Port Hills offers collectors a rare opportunity to acquire a painting by one of New Zealand’s most influential artists, whose mastery of landscape painting continues to reveal the depth and subtlety of his artistic vision.
41 GUY NGAN (1926 - 2017)
Australian Spirit 1976
Oil on board 59 x 119 cm
Original artist label affixed verso
$35,000 - 45,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from artist
42 GUY NGAN (1926 - 2017)
Animated Colours No.11
Oil on board 151.5 x 92 cm
Signed & dated 1973 lower right
Original artist label affixed verso
$80,000 - 120,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from artist
A vibrant example of Guy Ngan’s dynamic exploration of colour, pattern and spatial rhythm, Animated Colours No. 11 reflects the artist’s deep engagement with abstraction and design during a pivotal period in his career. Painted in 1973, this large-scale oil on board is part of Ngan’s Animated Colours series, in which shifting fields of saturated colour and geometric form pulse with an almost musical intensity. These works demonstrate his ability to blend a modernist aesthetic with a distinctly Pacific sensibility.
Animated Colours No. 11 exemplifies Ngan’s unique contribution to New Zealand’s modernist movement. Bold, confident and expansive, it is both a sophisticated visual statement and a testament to his enduring legacy as one of the country’s most respected artists.
Signed lower right
$5,000 - 7,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
43 ROBERT NETTLETON FIELD (1899 – 1987)
Autumnal Garden
Oil on board 39.5 x 49.5 cm
Large Red Sunflowers 1973
Oil on board, double-sided 108 x 91 cm
Signed & dated 1973 centre right; inscribed verso
$15,000 - 25,000
PROVENANCE
An Estate Collection, Auckland
44 PHILIP TRUSTTUM (b. 1940)
45 RAYMOND CHING (b. 1939)
The North Island Saddleback
Watercolour 45.5 x 66.5 cm
Signed & dated 1961
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from John Leech Gallery, Auckland
EXHIBITED
Thirty Birds, John Leech Gallery, Auckland, 1966
46 RAYMOND CHING (b. 1939)
Hornbill Philippines from a 19th Century Specimen
Watercolour 73 x 65 cm
Signed & dated 1966
$12,000 - 16,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from John Leech Gallery, Auckland
EXHIBITED
Thirty Birds, John Leech Gallery, Auckland, 1966
47 PETER MCINTYRE (1910 - 95)
On the Wharf at Leigh
Watercolour and ink on paper 52 x 73 cm
Signed lower right
$24,000 - 28,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
The preparatory sketch for On the Wharf at Leigh, which features in Peter McIntyre’s New Zealand, A H & A W Reed Ltd, 1964, p.26
48 PETER MCINTYRE (1910 - 95)
Santa Maria della Salute from Grand Canal
Watercolour 71 x 51 cm
Signed lower right
Willeston Galleries, Wellington label affixed verso
$12,000 - 16,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
49 PETER MCINTYRE (1910 - 95)
Central Otago Riverscape
Oil on board 39.5 x 49.5 cm
Signed lower right
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Private Collection, Canada
50 PETER MCINTYRE (1910 - 95)
Central Otago
Oil on board 37 x 58 cm
Signed lower right
Willeston Galleries, Wellington label affixed verso
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Canada
51 PETER MCINTYRE (1910 - 95) Kaikoura
Watercolour 51.5 x 73.5 cm
Signed lower right
Original label affixed verso
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from John Leech Gallery, 1964
EXHIBITED
One Man Exhibition, John Leech Gallery, Auckland, 1964
Oil on fine portrait linen 95 x 178 cm
Signed & dated 2013 lower right
$20,000 - 30,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from the artist
Oil on fine portrait linen 125 x 95 cm
Signed & dated 2011 lower right
$18,000 - 22,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from the artist
52 ROSS JONES (b. 1966)
Urban Escape
53 ROSS JONES (b. 1966)
Pond Yacht
All Sorts - Ginger
Oil on shaped canvas 125.5 x 86 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 2006 verso
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from Milford Gallery, Dunedin
Australian Mothers Oil on canvas 99.5 x 161 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 1985 - 1993 verso
$10,000 - 15,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from the artist
54 JOANNA BRAITHWAITE (b. 1962)
55 ALEXIS HUNTER (1948 - 2014)
Captain Planet
Corrugated iron 195 x 98 cm
$15,000 - 20,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from Milford Galleries, Dunedin
EXHIBITED
Tipping Point, Hannah Kidd, Milford Galleries, Dunedin, 2015
57 TOSS WOOLLASTON (1910 - 98)
Untitled, Landscape
Watercolour 25 x 33.5 cm
Signed lower right
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
56 HANNAH KIDD (b. 1979)
58 TOSS WOOLLASTON (1910 - 98)
Untitled
Watercolour 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Signed lower right
$3,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
59 TOSS WOOLLASTON (1910 - 98)
Untitled
Watercolour 23 x 36 cm
Signed lower right
$3,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
60 TOSS WOOLLASTON (1910 - 98)
The Artist’s House, Riwaka
Watercolour, diptych 25.5 x 70 cm
Signed lower right
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
61
61 PATRICK HAYMAN (1915 - 88)
Prospero’s Island
Gouache on paper 29.5 x 44 cm
Signed & dated 1979 lower right
Signed, title inscribed & dated 1979 on label affixed verso
$3,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
62 PATRICK HAYMAN (1915 - 88)
Swimmers by the Shore
Oil and ink on paper 25.5 x 35.5 cm
Title inscribed & dated 1965 verso
$2,000 - 3,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
63 PATRICK HAYMAN (1915 - 88)
Friends by the Sea
Gouache and pencil on paper 18 x 25 cm
Signed & dated 1967 upper right
Signed, inscribed & dated 1967 verso
$1,000 - 1,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
64 DOUGLAS MACDIARMID (1922 - 2020)
Beyond Tekapo 1956
Oil on board 34.2 x 24.1 cm
Signed & dated 1956 lower right
$4,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wellington
After WWII, young Douglas MacDiarmid was desperate to leave New Zealand to devour the world, to immerse himself in places of continuous human civilisation - the sources of our language, culture, philosophy - and experience great works of art and exotic locations savoured in books he had been reading since childhood. By the time Beyond Tekapo was painted, he had travelled abroad, returned home, and felt compelled to leave again. This painting was likely created for someone who was familiar with Tekapo but lived abroad, perhaps a Canterbury school or university friend, or a Scottish cousin. Otherwise, the title would have no relevance to British or European audiences.
ANNA CAHILL
65 W A (BILL) SUTTON (1917 - 2000)
Near Lake Lyndon
Watercolour 39 x 52 cm
Signed & dated 1990 lower right
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
NGAIO MARSH (1895 - 1982)
Tyrolean Village
Oil on board 24.5 x 33 cm
Signed lower right
$5,000 - 10,000
PROVENANCE
The Estate of Dr. Gerald Gibb (1924-2017), Auckland University Professor
It never occurred to me that I would attempt to be anything else in life but a serious painter; there was no question of looking upon art as a sort of obsessive hobby – it was everything.
- Dame Ngaio Marsh
Hugely talented, charming and enigmatic, Dame Ngaio Marsh was one of New Zealand’s most accomplished cultural figures a true pioneer who rose to international fame as a crime writer, playwright, painter and theatre director. With a career spanning art and literature, she remains one of our most admired creative exports, often named amongst the great queens of crime fiction alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.
A founding member of The Group, Marsh helped revolutionise the New Zealand art scene in the 1920s by challenging the conservative norms of the time. Though best known for her literary works and theatrical productions, Marsh was deeply committed to painting throughout her life, frequently working en plein air and sharing art studios with fellow New Zealand artists Evelyn Page and Olivia Spencer Bower.
Tyrolean Village is a rare and charming work by Marsh, encapsulating her strong sense of place and her keen eye for the nuances of light and atmosphere. Painted with affection and vitality, it speaks to the formative artistic training she received at Canterbury College School of Art, as well as the enduring influence of European travel on her visual sensibilities.
This work is not only a testament to Marsh’s considerable talent as a visual artist, but also a highly collectable piece of New Zealand cultural history. Rarely seen on the market, and resonant with her broader life’s work, Tyrolean Village offers collectors the unique opportunity to acquire an artwork by one of the nation’s most iconic and multifaceted figures.
Portrait of Ngaio Marsh with arms folded, holding a cigarette, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 34-0304, photographer Clifton Firth
67 RHONA HASZARD (1901 - 1931)
A Sark Morning, c. 1930
Watercolour 23 x 30 cm
Signed lower right
Original exhibition label affixed verso
$4,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wellington
Label Verso Reads, A Sark Morning, Aquarelle, Par Mlle Rhona Haszard, Victoria College Alexandrie
Watercolour 42.5 x 33 cm
Signed & dated 1971 lower right
$2,000 - 4,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from artist
68 ROBYN KAHUKIWA (1938 - 2025)
Tamawahine
69 PAULINE & JAMES YEARBURY
Hine-Takura (Winter Girl)
Incised Wood Panel 79.5 x 45.5 cm
Signed centre right
$3,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from artist
70 PAULINE YEARBURY (1928 - 77)
The Offering Oil on board 34.5 x 94.5 cm
Signed & dated 1968 lower right
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from artist
A rare oil painting by pioneering Māori artist Pauline Yearbury, The Offering is a lyrical and contemplative composition that fuses Christian iconography with Māori visual language. Rendered in her characteristically bold illustrative style, the scene presents a serene triangular grouping: an angel-like figure presents a bowl of fruit to a central seated woman, who is embraced by a child with a luminous halo.
Best known for her incised wooden panels depicting figures from Māori whakapapa and mythology, Yearbury’s painted works are far scarcer. This composition, with its rich symbolism, luminous palette and delicate balance of gesture and gaze, reveals her deep commitment to cultural retelling and visual invention.
The Offering is a significant rediscovery: a rare example of her painting practice that bridges Māori storytelling and Western traditions with grace, reverence and unmistakable originality.
71 TERRY STRINGER (b. 1946)
Remembering 1989
Oil on bronze, 14 x 20 cm
Signed, inscribed 202 & dated 1989
$2,000 - 3,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
72 MERVYN WILLIAMS (b. 1940)
Layered Greys
Acrylic on canvas 61.5 x 53 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 2000 verso
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
ILLUSTRATED
Mervyn Williams, From Modernism to the Digital Age, Edward Hanfling, Ron Sang Publications, 2014, p. 220
73 ROY GOOD (b. 1945)
Planes Bisect - Morocco II
Acrylic on board 116 x 60 cm
Signed, inscribed Planes Bisect - Morocco II & dated 2015 verso
$6,000 - 8,000
EXHIBITED
Planes Bisect, ARTIS Gallery, Auckland, 2016
Diamond & Two Squares Bisect
Signed, inscribed Diamond & Two Squares Bisect & dated 2015 verso
$7,000 - 10,000
EXHIBITED
Planes Bisect, ARTIS Gallery, Auckland, 2016
74 ROY GOOD (b. 1945)
Acrylic on canvas 100 x 100 cm
75 MAX GIMBLETT (b. 1935)
Transformation 1, 1983-84
Acrylic polymer & metallic pigment on handmade paper 56 x 76 cm
Signed & dated 1983 lower right
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Screenprint, Edition A/P 38 x 48.5 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated 1979
$2,500 - 3,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
76 MAX GIMBLETT (b. 1935) Jade
77
Whatipu Over Paritutai
Charcoal and pastel on paper 29 x 42 cm
Signed & dated March 1990 upper left
$3,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
78 RICHARD KILLEEN (b. 1946)
Footsteps
Oil on hardboard 68.5 x 45.5 cm
Signed, titled & dated December 1972 on original artist label affixed verso
$3,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from Petar/James Gallery, Auckland, 1972
DON BINNEY (1940 - 2012)
Inside the Garden 1
Watercolour & gouache on paper 37 x 37 cm
Signed, inscribed & dated Sept 1967
$5,500 - 7,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
79 PAT HANLY (1932 - 2004)
80 JOHN SHOTTON PARKER (1944 - 2017)
Untitled
Gouache & acrylic on paper 90 x 121 cm
Signed & dated 1990 lower right
$3,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from Judith Anderson Gallery, Auckland
81 GUY NGAN (1926 - 2017)
Untitled
Oil on board 60.5 x 25 cm
Artist stamp lower right
$3,000 - 5,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired directly from the artist
82 FELIX KELLY (1914 - 94)
Lythanger, Empshott Oil on panel 14 x 22 cm
Partridge Fine Arts, London, label affixed verso
$2,500 - 3,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
83 FELIX KELLY (1914 - 94)
Duxford Mill, Cambridge Oil on panel 16.5 x 21.5 cm
Partridge Fine Arts, London, label affixed verso
$2,500 - 3,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
84 FELIX KELLY (1914 - 94)
Sans Souci, Black Emperors Palace Oil on board 44 x 61 cm
Signed lower right
Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, label affixed verso
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
85 GARTH
(1927 - 99)
Adjournment, from the Law Series Oil on hardboard 27 x 35.5 cm
Signed lower right
Signed, inscribed Adjournment Law Series & dated 1980 on label affixed verso
$5,000 - 7,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from International Art Centre, The Paul & Kerry Barber Collection with Important & Rare Art, Auckland, 23/10/2019, Lot No. 97
TAPPER
86 EDWARD FRISTROM (1864 - 1950)
Auckland Wharves Oil on board 24 x 28 cm
Signed lower right
$4,000 - 6,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Acquired from International Art Centre, The
Paul & Kerry Barber Collection with Important & Rare Art, Auckland, 23/10/2019, Lot No. 30
National & International Art Auction, Dunbar Sloane, 03/04/1996
1973)
Morning Haze, Espalion, South East France, 1938
Oil on canvas 50 x 60 cm
Signed lower right
Original label affixed verso
$12,000 - 16,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
87 SYDNEY LOUGH THOMPSON (1877 -
Signed lower right
$2,000 - 3,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
88 MAUD SHERWOOD (1880 - 1956)
Untitled, Jetty
Watercolour 28.5 x 26 cm
89 FRANCES HODGKINS (1869 - 1947)
An Old Age Pensioner, 1900
Watercolour 40 x 30 cm
Signed & dated 1900 upper right
$28,000 - 38,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
EXHIBITED
Canterbury Society of Arts, 20th Annual Exhibition, Canterbury Society of Arts Gallery, Christchurch 27 Mar 1900 - Apr 1900
CATALOGUE NUMBER
FH0310 - https://completefranceshodgkins.com/ objects/25759/an-old-age-pensioner
90 VERA CUMMINGS (1891- 1949)
In Doubt, Atama Paparangi Chieftain of the Rarawa Tribe Oil on canvas 23 x 18 cm
Signed lower right
$8,000 - 12,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
91 FRED ROE (British 1864 - 1947)
Leaving the Mill c.1923
Pencil & watercolour 76 x 57.5 cm
Signed lower left
$1,500 - 2,500
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
92 MARGARET
Diamond Harbour Coast
Watercolour 26 x 37 cm
Signed lower left
$6,000 - 8,000
PROVENANCE
Private Collection
(1865 - 1934)
OLROG STODDART
Lot 30 (Detail) FRANCES HODGKINS East Anglian Farm, 1939
Lot 28
ROGER MORTIMER
Houhora 2, 2020
ABSENTEE BIDDING FORM IMPORTANT & RARE ART
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TELEPHONE
Signature / / 2025
I have read and understand the Conditions of Sale. International Art Centre offers this service to clients unable to attend sale and is not responsible for error or failure to execute bids.
Email to info@internationalartcentre.co.nz before 3pm day of sale
Alternatively, visit our website www.internationalartcentre.co.nz and place absentee bids online or our bidding platform to participate in the auction live and remotely https://auctions.internationalartcentre.co.nz
A CENTURY OF MODERN ART
Berthe Morisot In the Garden at Maurecourt (detail), 1884, oil on canvas, Toledo Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
ROBERT ELLIS, Maungawhau, Mt Eden Mixed media on paper 56 x 37 cm
By
Anthony D Blake
The Moutohura Waka Unua Sails with the Endeavour, November 2 1769 Oil on canvas | 40 x 60 cm | $45,000
Maritime Masterpieces
Les Femmes Exhibition - Invited Artists
4 - 2 August 2025
Eugenea | The Messenger | Oil on canvas | 80 x 98 cm | $20,000
SINGLE VENDOR
From time to time, the secondary market is fortunate enough to be exposed to one of those rare collections which transcends the value of its individual works of art, and stands to represent something iconic in its entirety. Our team is wellversed in the process of offering single-owner collections for sale, and take pride in the process of curating a single-owner sale when the opportunity arises. We offer a targeted marketing campaign and maximise the use of both electronic and print-based collateral to effectively showcase such collections to maximum effect. The strong networks we have established locally and internationally are reflected in some of the private collections which have been entrusted to us.
COLLECTABLE ONLINE AUCTION
Our frequent Collectable online auctions provide excellent opportunities for both buyers and sellers alike. This increasingly popular sales category brings to market a wide range of diverse works from early topographical to the latest in contemporary art. Lower-priced works from sought-after artists in print and edition form, along with ceramics and sculpture are catalogued online and available for viewing at our Parnell premises. Online registration and bidding via our bidding platform.
CONSIGN NOW
IMPORTANT & RARE
Our Important & Rare auctions are the proven, pre-eminent sale category for major works of art sold in New Zealand to a global clientele. Important & Rare auctions are held quarterly. The offerings are promoted extensively through our online platform and the publication of well-researched catalogues sent to committed collectors worldwide.
CONTACT
Richard Thomson richard@artcntr.co.nz Mobile 0274 751 071
Grace Alty - gracealty@artcntr.co.nz
Luke Davies - luke@artcntr.co.nz
Grace Harris - grace@artcntr.co.nz
Telephone +64 9 379 4010 / 0800 800 322 www.internationalartcentre.co.nz
PETER SIDDELL Harbour
B
BANKSY 17, 18, 19
BENSEMANN L 40
BINNEY D ........................... 1, 2, 32, 77
BRAITHWAITE J .............................. 54
CHING R 45, 46
CUMMINGS V ................................ 90
DAWE B 4 DIBBLE P 20
KAHUKIWA R 68
KELLY F 33, 82, 83, 84
KIDD H ............................................... 56
KILLEEN R ......................................... 78 M
MACDIARMID D 64 MARSH N .......................................... 66 MATCHITT P ..................................... 14 MAUGHAN K 16 MCINTYRE P 47, 48, 49, 50, 51
R................................... 28
G 21, 41, 42, 81 NIN B 24 P PALMER S ........................................... 6 PARDINGTON F 25, 26
GIMBLETT M 75, 76
GOLDIE C F 39, 34, 35,
GOOD R ..................................... 73, 74
HANLY P 79
HASZARD R 67
HAYMAN P ...................... 7, 61, 62, 63
HODGKINS F ........................... 30, 89
HOTERE R 10
HUNTER A 55
JONES R ..................................... 52, 53
PAREK W M 23 PARKER J S ...................................... 80 PATERSON R ................................... 22 R ROE F 91 S
SCALES F .......................................... 29 SCOTT I 12
SHARPE A 36, 37
SHERWOOD M .............................. 88
SIDDELL P ..................................... 5, 31
STODDART M O 92
STRINGER T 3, 15, 71
SUTTON W A (BILL) ....................... 65
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 1 August 2025 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.
No lot may be collected whilst auction is in progress. Payment can also not be made until completion of auction.
SUBJECT BIDS
When the auctioneer declares a lot ‘subject’ this means the bid is below the set reserve and is subject to vendor accepting, rejecting or negotiating the bid. International Art Centre will endeavour to make contact with the vendor immediately after sale or the following day. If the bid is accepted, the highest bidder is obligated to make purchase.
ESTIMATES
Estimates are provided for each entry and act as a guide only. They are prepared well in advance of sale and are subject to revision at any time. Estimates are based on hammer price and do not include buyers premium.
ABSENTEE BIDS
Absentee bidding arranged - please refer to absentee bidding in back of catalogue. Email to info@internationalartcentre.co.nz before 3pm day of sale. Please do not be offended if a member of our staff ask for your credit card details as security.
Absentee bids can also be left via our website to registered members. Our website www.internationalartcentre.co.nz acts as a useful auxiliary to the catalogue but we recommend inspection or a condition report prior to leaving a bid. Our staff will gladly supply you with a condition report on any lot.
TELEPHONE BIDS
Telephone bidding available to subscribers and registered bidders. There is no charge for this service.
PAYMENT FACILITIES
Eftpos: Available for transactions depending on your daily limit.
Bank deposits: Bank instructions on invoice if paying by direct debit. Quote the Lot number(s) purchased and surname as reference.
Credit cards: Visa and Mastercard with a 2% surcharge.
International Art Centre no longer accepts cheques.
PROTECTED OBJECTS ACT
Art objects over 50 years old made by an artist or maker born in or related to New Zealand may be protected New Zealand objects, and therefore require permission from the Ministry for Culture and Heritage in order to be exported. Applications for permission to export can be made at https://mch.govt.nz/nz-identityheritage/protected-objects/exporting
FREIGHT & PACKING
International Art Centre arrange door to door delivery both nationally and internationally. Please arrange insurance on your items prior to them leaving our premises. Uber deliveries within the wider Auckland area can also be arranged.
OTHER ENQUIRIES
Should you have any questions relating to the sale or if we can be of any other assistance please contact us during business hours on (09) 379 4010, Toll Free 0800 800 322 or email info@ internationalartcentre.co.nz
BUYERS PREMIUM
18.5% Buyers premium plus GST on premium applies to all lots. (Total buyers premium is 21.27% including GST)
Illustrated Back Cover Lot 31
PETER SIDDELL
City with Towered Houses, 1974
Lot 33
FELIX KELLY
‘African Capriccio’ Post Office, Sierra Leone
