Important Paintings & Contemporary Art Consign Now

IMPORTANT PAINTINGS & CONTEMPORARY ART 25 NOVEMBER 2014 CONSIGN NOW

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Shane Cotton, Recreation, 1.5M Drop. Skull And Coloured Birds Against Stone Face Clouds. Estimate $75,000 - $100,000

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IMPORTANT PAINTINGS & CONTEMPORARY ART 25 NOVEMBER 2014

ENTRIES CLOSE 27 OCTOBER 2014

Charles Ninow Fine & Contemporary Art Specialist Auctioneer M: +64 29 770 4767 DDI: +64 9 529 5601 cninow@webbs.co.nz

Simon Bowerbank Photography, Fine & Contemporary Art Specialist M: +64 210 451 464 P: +64 9 524 6804 sbowerbank@webbs.co.nz

Carey Young Fine & Contemporary Art Specialist Wellington M: +64 21 368 348 cyoung@webbs.co.nz

Webb’s Auction House. 18 Manukau Road, Newmarket, Auckland 1149, New Zealand Ph: 09 524 6804 E: auctions@webbs.co.nz www.webbs.co.nz

Gillie Deans Fine & Contemporary Art Specialist South Island M: +64 27 226 9785 gdeans@webbs.co.nz

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IMAGE: Lloyd Godman, Bill Hammond among the Rata Forest at night, Auckland Islands, 1989. Image courtesy of the artist and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.

small group of large-scale paintings made over a number of years that serve as a central, unifying strand to this period in his practice. Using depictions of cliff faces as a key narrative device, other works from this sub-series have been acquired to represent Cotton’s late-career period in a number of major institutional collections: Red Shift (2007) was purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery, and Takarangi (2007) is held in the collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu. The offering of Recreation follows that of The Painted Bird (2010), which sold for $120,000 at Webb’s in November 2013 and was the first major work of this period in Cotton’s career to be presented at auction.

Sea of Love (2009) by Seraphine Pick is unquestionably the finest work by this artist to ever have been made available to the auction market. Pick first began using ultramarine and indigo pigments in the late 1990s in a series of major works that employed domestic and figurative imagery and embodied a loose approach to painting that had held her attention earlier in the decade. Sea of Love is one of a small number of major mature ‘blue paintings’ made in the late 2000s. Well regarded for their consummate execution and pictorial clarity, these works employ the fantastical imagery that was central to her practice of the 2000s.

In addition to these noteworthy paintings by the ‘Christchurch school’ of the early 1990s, the sale will also present works from the broader spectrum of

contemporary New Zealand art. Further early consignments include a largescale instance of Michael Parekowhai’s Elmer Keith photographs, an exceptional example of Richard Killeen’s late-career digital paintings on canvas titled Butterfly Vault, a number of works by Andrew Mcleod, and a very fine sculptural work by Peter Madden, among others.

New Zealand’s modern period is represented by a suite of works that speak to the historical development of art making in this country. Rita Angus’ The Sawmill Site–Maungataniwha is a superb example of the artist’s smooth, crystalline approach to realism. It is very infrequent that Angus’s works are presented to the market, and therefore this is a rare opportunity to acquire a painting by a canonical figure whose influence changed the course of painting in New Zealand.

Milan Mrkusich is another artist who can be regarded as a ‘pioneer’ within the context of 20th-century New Zealand art. Aside from some early forays into figurativism, Mrkusich dedicated his career to the exploration of abstract imagery, altogether abandoning the regionalist approach championed by artists such as Angus. Two works by Mrkusich have already been consigned to this auction, and each is typical of an important series from the 1960s. Earth Emblem IV (1964) belongs, as the title suggests, to the artist’s Emblem series, in which he gradually introduced hard lines to his then painterly abstraction. Stoccato

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

Our spring sale is a celebration of exceptional New Zealand art—a tour-deforce of masterworks with a strong focus on historically significant contemporary practice. Undoubtedly, the cornerstone of the sale is Bill Hammond’s Searching for Ashburton, which is easily one of the most important works by the artist to ever be presented at auction. Given that it was painted in 1996, the year in which the artist produced his iconic viridian landscapes that served as a model for his future work, it is a rarity. While Hammond’s paintings from this period, including Placemakers I and The Fall of Icarus, which are illustrated in the artist’s monograph Jingle Jangle Morning (published by Christchurch Art Gallery, 2007), are arguably his most recognised and highly sought-after works, few have ever been presented to the auction market. Much like Colin McCahon’s No. 2 and Don Binney’s Swoop of the Kotare, which have each developed mythical statuses since being sold by Webb’s some years ago, the availability of Searching for Ashburton will similarly be viewed as a defining moment in the history of the secondary market for Hammond’s practice.

In addition to Searching for Ashburton, Shane Cotton—another artist who emerged as a seminal figure in the New Zealand art world in the 1990s—is represented by a painting from his celebrated 2006– 2010 period titled Recreation: 1.5m Drop, Skull and Coloured Birds against Stone Face Clouds (2009). The work is part of a

Ostinato (1966), a slightly later painting, is typical of the artist’s Element series of the mid-1960s; each work from this line of enquiry is an arrangement of various geometric shapes with a rhythmic, almost melodic quality; their imagery functions in the same manner as musical scores.

Landscape Panels in Memory of Daisy Le Cren (1976) by Colin McCahon was painted in a highly productive year for this artist; in this period, he embarked on a number of major developments, such as the Noughts And Crosses, Rocks in the Sky and the Scared series. In this painting, the artist employs the bright-coloured pigments and ‘scumbled’ paint markings that were typical of the period, yet he turns his focus back to the landscape, which had captivated him earlier in the decade. This work has the same metaphysical concerns as his text-based works of that time, albeit hidden beneath a veneer of poetic imagery.

Another work by a modern master that engages with the tradition of landscape painting in New Zealand is Don Binney’s Mad Tui Over Homestead, Te Henga (2009); this is a prototypical example of the artist’s practice.

2014 has been exceptional year for the New Zealand art market. With a top sale price of $412,000 (Kauri Trees, Titirangi

by Colin McCahon, sold by Webbs in March) and very healthy sales totals reported across the board—Webb’s last sale generated a total of more than $1.6 million (the highest of the season)—it is clear that there is an enthusiastic, dedicated market for exceptional New Zealand art. Given the quality of the works already consigned for this sale, Webb’s November flagship auction, which will be our final auction for 2014, promises to be an event that captivates the attention of the market.

We encourage you contact our team of specialists for a no-obligation appraisal or opinion about the current dynamics of the market. Webb’s scale, expertise and innovative marketing strategies will see that your important cultural asset is leveraged to its best advantage.

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Anchored by Bill Hammond’s seminal work, Searching for Ashburton, our November sale is a celebration of exceptional New Zealand artworks. Our impressive nucleus of early consignments has a strong focus on major works by renowned contemporary artists and includes modern paintings of remarkable resolve.

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Bill Hammond, Searching for Ashburton. Estimate $220,000 - $280,000

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Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

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Conceived in Hammond’s most universally celebrated year of production and encapsulating all of his key imagery, including filigree-draped avian-humaniforms and references to colonial settlement in New Zealand, this work is of the archetype that established Hammond as our nation’s most sought-after living artist.

1996: A Moment of Clarity Bill Hammond Searching for Ashburton acrylic on paper laid on canvas signed W. D. Hammond, dated 1996 and inscribed Searching For Ashburton in brushpoint lower edge 1340mm x 1765mm Estimate $220,000 - $280,000

Every artist continues to grow and develop throughout his or her career. Starting with a set of raw concepts and ideas, the path to creating exceptional, historically significant artwork is a process of ongoing refinement and improvement in which an artist’s key points of reference are progressively crystallised into imagery that is stripped of unessential content and that communicates its essence with a clear and uncompromising voice. It can be difficult to determine the precise moment when an artist achieves absolute synergy between idea and agency, but when viewed in retrospect, this moment is often to easier to distinguish. While artists may achieve this point of clarity numerous times in their career, there is usually a specific moment when they arrive at the model or style that will define the rest of their career.

For Bill Hammond, it is well-known

that a visit to the Auckland Islands in 1990 was a turning point in his career.

The remote islands are essentially devoid of any human or mammalian life, and thus the native bird population has been allowed to grow and develop unchallenged by any natural predators. This experience prompted Hammond to ponder a world where humans were not the dominant species. By introducing bird forms into his paintings (which slowly began to replace his depictions of humans), the artist started to create art that proposed an evolutionary history for avian life, whereby it developed a simian-like physical attributes and was the dominant species in a lush environment closely resembling New Zealand.

While Hammond continued to develop this broad-reaching project in the years following his Auckland Islands visit, it was in 1996 that he established the aesthetic

model with which his name would become synonymous. It was in this period that he pioneered his use of the viridian-tinged greens and perfected his depictions of the slender, delicately detailed avianhumaniforms that are central to his art.

While Hammond had previously engaged with narratives drawn from New Zealand’s colonial history and the ecological footprint of the human race, it was in 1996 that he obtained a perfect synergism of these wide-reaching reference points as a subtle critique of modern day society.

The year 1996 is as significant to Hammond as 1954 was to Colin McCahon (the year in which I Am was painted), as 1965 was to Gordon Walters (the year in which he held his first exhibition of Koru paintings at the New Vision Gallery), and as 1968 was to Don Binney (the year in which he produced Pacific Frigate Bird 1).

It was in 1996 that Hammond achieved absolute synergy between idea and agency.

At the Flood $230,000

Singer Songwriter $316,250

SOLD 2012

SOLD 2011

All Along the Heaphy Highway $247,500 SOLD 2010

SOLD 2010

SOLD 2009

SOLD 2013

SOLD 2013

SOLD 2013

Fortified Gang Headquarters $326,250

Farmer's Market $322,000

Last Nightjar in Congested Sky $287,500

Zoomorphic Lounge $205,200

Jingle Jangle Morning AU$276,000

Flag $257,600

SOLD 2009

SOLD 2009

Whistlers Mother, Sticks and Stones $264,000 SOLD 2003

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

The Periods to which Hammond’s Top-Selling Paintings Belong

2006

2007

2008

2009

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

Zealand in the 1800s. In a stark landscape that has been stripped of all but a few isolated remnants of native flora (presumably in preparation for cultivation and urban development), the slender figures wander the expanse, searching for a place to lay foundations.

Searching for Ashburton speaks to the fact that any dominant life form will eventually develop into a destructive force if allowed to flourish unchecked.

Indeed, while the artist’s work in the early 1990s touched upon the politics surrounding colonialism, it is the much broader-reaching ecological sentiment—expressed without any obvious allusions to modern, industrialised society—that makes his work from 1996 truly stand out.

Searching for Ashburton is typical of the artist’s very best works from this period. Like the iconic Placemakers 1 and Fall of Icarus, both of which were painted in 1996, this work was executed in a fluid pool of green pigment isolated in a bone-white field of raw ground, interrupted only by stray splashes and protruding drips of paint.

Additionally, similar to these other works, the figures in Searching for Ashburton are draped in delicate patterns derived from the native landscape surrounding them—a subtle allusion to their apparent sophistication being

With a frame of reference set in the mid-1800s, when the town of Ashburton was founded in what is now referred to as the Canterbury region, Searching for Ashburton is a masterwork with which Bill Hammond remarks upon New Zealand’s cultural and social history and the broader premise of European settlement, colonisation and natural resource management. With the inclusion of key motifs, such as the artist’s iconic avian-humaniforms, horses, vertical paint drips, a sparse viridian-green landscape and depictions of vegetation closely resembling that which is native to New Zealand (such as flaxes and ferns), this is one of the most extensive, comprehensive works by Hammond ever presented to the market.

At its heart, Searching for Ashburton is a depiction of Darwin’s concept of ‘the struggle for existence’—all living beings must compete for resources in order to survive. While the work imagines a world without human habitation, it does so in order to critique the destructive tendencies of the real-world human population. In Searching for Ashburton, Hammond’s imagined race of avian-humaniforms, which have filled the void left in the absence of human life, is posed in a manner that echoes the practices of European settlers who colonised New

A Lullaby of Birdland $247,500

fueled by the consumption and comodification of the world around them.

While Hammond’s paintings of 1996 are amongst his most iconic—perhaps rivalled only by his works of 2006 and 2007, such as Hokey Pokey and Ancient Pitch—they are decidedly scarce. Only one other major, green-coloured work from this period, Fortified Gang Headquarters, has been presented to the auction market.

It was this work that achieved the all-time record price of $326,250 at Webb’s half a decade ago (this is also the highest price ever achieved for any living New Zealand artist at auction). In the years since this work was presented, the public’s high regard and demand for Hammond’s work has resulted in notable value increases for his practice across the board. This surge in demand was perhaps best demonstrated by the extraordinary price of $322,000 achieved for Farmer’s Market in November of 2013, which had been painted only 4 years earlier. Given that no major paintings by the artist have been offered in 2014 and that Searching for Ashburton belongs to the artist’s most celebrated year of production (and is unquestionably one of the finest works by Hammond that have ever been presented at auction), this painting will serve as the cornerstone of a sale campaign that will captivate the market’s attention.

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Introducing Searching For Ashburton

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Shane Cotton, Recreation: 1.5M Drop. Skull And Coloured Birds Against Stone Face Clouds. Estimate $75,000 - $100,000

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Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

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12 Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

Shane Cotton Recreation: 1.5M Drop, Skull And Coloured Birds Against Stone Face Clouds acrylic on canvas signed S. Cotton and dated 2009 in brushpoint lower edge and inscribed Recreation: 1.5M DROP, SKULL and COLOURED BIRDS against STONE FACE CLOUDS in brushpoint lower edge; signed Shane L. Cotton, dated 2008 - 2009 and inscribed Recreation: 1.5m drop, skull and coloured birds against stone face clouds in ink verso 1505mm x 2205mm Estimate $75,000 - $100,000

Shane Cotton’s artistic project first rose to prominence with his celebrated ochre practice of the 1990s, commonly referred to as the ‘ancestry’ paintings. The works were instantly applauded and gave voice to a new generation of Maori, whose lives were shaped not only by the Treaty of Waitangi but also by American television, the forces of globalisation and modern-day countercultural movements. However, they also came at the beginning of a long, illustrious career that would see Cotton explore the cultural identity of modern-day tangata whenua and the inhabitants of New Zealand from every possible vantage.

While Cotton introduced the use of airbrushes into his practice in the early 2000s, from 2006 onwards, super-flat imagery, which appeared devoid of any human sleights of hand, became central to his practice. This late-career period was recently the focus of a mid-career survey exhibition entitled The Hanging Sky, which toured Australasia throughout 2013 and 2014. The works from this period (which roughly covers 2006 – 2010) see the artist move away from the compositions of heavily layered signifiers of his early and mid-career toward spatial treatments that followed a decidedly more minimalist ethos. In these works, the artist paid careful attention to the relationships between his visual elements, i.e. the amount of space between each and the manner in which their respective colour and silhouette related to one another.

Recreation: 1.5 Drop, Skull and Coloured Birds against Stone Face Clouds belongs to a small subseries of works that serves as a central strand of this

period and is colloquially referred to as the ‘cliff face’ paintings. A number of major institutions whose holdings represent this period in Cotton’s practice have elected to acquire a work from the ‘cliff face’ series. Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu own Takarangi (2007) and Queensland Art Gallery holds Red Shift (2007), both of which were included in The Hanging Sky. Recreation is a major, mature work in which Cotton employs imagery and signifiers that reference the entire gamut of his career. The central skull is a doubleedged signifier that refers both to human mortality and also to the moko mai (preserved, tattooed Maori heads) of his earlier practice, whereas the darting birds have been employed to refer to the spirituality of the tangata whenua. The cliff form on the right-hand side of the image serves as a distant reminder of the subject—ownership of land—that was once integral to the artist’s practice. Through a poetic manipulation of paint, form and colour, Recreation advocates the position that while genealogy is important, identity is ultimately self-determined. Indeed, the ‘cliff-face’ paintings are a moments of clarity in which Cotton assesses the issues with which he has grappled over the entire course of his career.

Aside from the The Painted Bird, which Webb’s sold for $120,000 in November 2013, this is the only other major work from the important Hanging Sky period to be presented to the market. In addition, this is the first major landscape format, post-2000 painting to be presented to the market in two years.

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

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Belonging to a small but vitally important sub-series, of which some notable examples been acquired by major institutions, Shane Cotton’s Recreation is a mature work which responds to the core concerns that have captivated the artist’s attention for an entire career.

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

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Michael Parekowhai Portrait of Elmer Keith #1 C-type print, edition of 10 signed Mike P on Michael Lett gallery label affixed verso 1250mm x 1010mm Estimate $15,000 - $25,000

After luring the viewer in with seemingly innocent, visually engaging images and forms, Parekowhai’s works deliver extremely complex metaphors that are often encoded with associations to colonisation and the importation of European culture to New Zealand. In this instance, Portrait of Elmer Keith #1 is named after a famous American cowboy, lawman, big game hunter, world-class marksman, and gun expert. The image depicts a taxidermied house sparrow against a flat orange background. The house sparrow, which was introduced to New Zealand from Europe in order to reduce the number of New Zealand’s crop-eating insects, is now a pest.

The disjointed relationship between the titles of Michael Parekowhai’s works and their content often provide valuable insight into unlocking hidden meanings.

Peter Madden The Sparrow's Heart found images, plastic beads and twigs on found European beech chair 780mm x 440mm x 430mm Estimate $4,000 - $5,000

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As a virtuoso with a scalpel, Madden’s works typically comprise multitudes of finely sliced photographs removed from the pages of National Geographic magazines, books and other printed material. For The Sparrow’s Heart, Madden has constructed this material into a surreal microcosm: a lavish threedimensional shrub assembled from images of various species of leaves, flower petals and colourful fruits. Planted into a varnished European beech chair, this flora is teeming with animal life: miniature butterflies and birds populate its leaves and, at its centre, a full-sized replica of a bird’s heart is balanced between groups of slender woody branches.

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

On an innocuous wooden chair, Peter Madden has cultivated a dense, encyclopaedic ecosystem composed of collected found images of various flora and fauna.

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Seraphine Pick Sea of Love oil on canvas signed Seraphine Pick and dated 2009 in brushpoint lower right; signed SP and inscribed Sea of Love in graphite verso 1120mm x 1530mm

Seraphine Pick’s Sea of love has its origin in an important series of blue paintings that the artist made in the late 1990s. These works were complicated tableaus involving clusters of human figures, references to the domestic subject matter that was central to her practice of the early 1990s and dashes of absurdist imagery. Painted a decade later, Sea of Love is a mature work that focuses on the fantastical subject matter that was a major feature of Pick’s work in the 2000s.

In this painting, which is a sea of human bodies, only one subject, the central female figure, addresses her gaze at the viewer. With her stoic posture, she appears separate from, yet integrally related to, the web of fiction that surrounds her, almost as if it is of her own creation. The hints of day-to-day reality that punctuate the composition—such as sleep masks, headphones and the strings of pearls that adorn certain figures—support this reading and give the imagery a dream-like quality (as if it has been indiscriminately pieced together from thoughts and memories imbedded in her subconscious).

Pick’s early practice engaged with the notion of personal identity and its propensity to be defined by external influences, such as the societal expectations associated with specific genders. Sea of Love also relates to the notion of personal identity, but it refers specifically to the ways in which self-identity is influenced by one’s preoccupations, aspirations and experiences.

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Finding its origin in a series of blue paintings that Pick made in the early 1990s, Sea of Love is a mature work based on the fantastical imagery that was an important feature of the artist’s practice throughout the 2000s.

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

Estimate $40,000 - $60,000

Milan Mrkusich Earth Emblem IV oil on jute canvas signed Mrkusich and dated ‘64 in brushpoint lower right; signed Mrkusich, dated 1964 and inscribed Earth Emblem IV in stencilled paint verso 1125mm x 865mm

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

Estimate $40,000 - $45,000

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Representation never concerned Mrkusich. For him, a painting depicts the conditions essential for its own existence: paint and canvas, nothing more.

It would be no exaggeration to describe Milan Mrkusich as the founding father of abstract art in New Zealand. Although he stopped painting some years ago, Mrkusich casts a long shadow across New Zealand’s art history.

Typically working in series, Mrkusich developed each body of paintings as a direct evolution from the series that preceded it. For the Emblem series, Mrkusich introduced a compositional strategy

in which he used geometric forms to dissect and compartmentalize fields of expressionistic painting adopted from the series of works he painted between 1959 and 1962. The meaning and significance of these geometric forms would later be interpreted according to Mrkusich’s reading of C. G. Jung’s Man and his Symbols in late 1964, the contents of which would influence the development of his painting for the rest of his career.

In the years preceding the creation of this painting, Mrkusich spent a considerable amount of time developing paintings inspired by the Jungian mandala motif.

Milan Mrkusich Staccato Ostinato oil on jute canvas signed Mrkusich and dated ‘66 in bruhspoint lower right; signed Mrkusich, dated 1966 and inscribed Staccato Ostinato in stencilled acrylic verso 1220mm x 860mm Estimate $45,000 - $50,00

Subsequent to Mrkusich’s reading of Man and his Symbols, Jungian archetypes became a central focus of his painting practice: The squared circle, or mandala, can be seen throughout a large proportion of his paintings. Jung theorized that the mandala, one of a number of recurring primordial motifs in our subconscious, is a blueprint for our psychological representation of the self. For the series to which Staccato Ostinato belongs, Mrkusich developed

further the diagrammatic approach that he initiated for the Emblems series. Ordered over an almost invisible grid, Staccato Ostinato presents an ochre mandala squared with a darker hue and framed by two horizontal bands of grey. Small red and blue dots inhabit the mandala’s textured circle, attracting and repelling one another like magnets.

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

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“A painting shows the facts of its own particular condition.

My way is to begin with an unambiguous form. This can be an all over geometric grid, or a squared circle in a quadrangular form. Both ways one approaches a tautological condition. The rightness or truth is self evident in the form itself.”

-Milan Mrkusich

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Colin McCahon Landscape panels in memory of Daisy Le Cren synthetic polymer paint on card, four panels signed C. McC and dated 76 in brushpoint lower left (each) 150mm x 205mm (each) Estimate $75,000 - $100,000

Employing the same yellow pigment that McCahon used in the Noughts and Crosses series, this work is a decidedly existentialist statement in which the artist questions the nature of the physical world.

In Memory of Daisy Le Cren was painted in a year of monumental production for McCahon. It was in 1976 that he embarked on landmark bodies of work, such as the Clouds and Noughts and Crosses series, many of which share the same brilliant yellow hue as Daisy Le Cren. In many

ways, Daisy Le Cren harks back to the artist’s landscapes of the early 1970s, which were painted just after he moved to his Muriwai studio. The manner in which landmass and sky are portrayed in bands colour of varying intensity was clearly informed by the strategies pioneered in his Kaipara series of 1970–1972.

However, while this work was a brief return to the landscape tradition, it was also a decidedly existentialist statement.

The lower right panel, which contains just faint semblances of dark pigment over a yellow ground (which one might decipher as descriptions of landforms) suggests that in McCahon’s view, our existence is not defined by our environment and the nature of our environment is defined by our perception of it.

Despite the high level of public recognition surrounding Rita Angus’s practice, relatively few works by the artist have been presented to the auction market (based on auction records, instances of her practice are 80 percent scarcer than those of McCahon and 60 percent scarcer than those of Binney).

Accordingly, it is particularly special to see a well-resolved, prototypical example such

Rita Angus The Sawmill Site watercolour on paper signed Rita Angus in brushpoint lower right; inscribed “The Sawmill Site - Maungataniwha” on the Angus Property. Painted from the managers house, 1965 in the Summer. Same site as the oil “Scrub Burning Nth Hawkes Bay in another hand on backing board verso 265mm x 375mm

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

Estimate $35,000 - $45,000

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As a prototypical example of Rita Angus’s iconic practice, this depiction of rural Northland includes the key pictorial elements for which the artist is most celebrated, such as rolling hills, crispedged forms and delicate gradients.

as The Sawmill Site, Maungataniwha presented to the market. The work depicts a rural region between Kaitaia and Okaihau in the artist’s reductive approach to realism, which is perfectly suited to the watercolour medium. Angus’s unique approach to figuration had a wide-ranging influence on later generations of New Zealand artists; it is clearly echoed in the smooth vistas seen in Don Binney’s paintings and the graphic imagery that Charles Tole produced in the 1960s.

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art Webb’s New Zealand’s Premier Auction House

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Don Binney Mad Tui Over Homestead, Te Henga, 2009 acrylic and oilstick laminate on arches paper signed Binney and dated 2009 in brushpoint lower right 385mm x 250mm Estimate $20,000 - $25,000

Painted in a hardedged style, with flat passages of paint, and sharp, crystalline outlines, Te Henga is firmly located in the distinctively harsh light of the South Pacific.

Appearing and reappearing throughout the years from a variety of vantage points, the wild and weathered west coast of Auckland has long occupied pride of place in Don Binney’s oeuvre. For Mad Tui Over Homestead, Te Henga, Binney has made use of a finely nuanced network of pale, muted blues, charcoal greys and dusty whites to depict a pair of tui in flight across the west coast’s Bethells Beach, an area for which Binney had an enduring appreciation and an intricate knowledge.

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

Grahame Sydney Water Trough oil on canvas signed Grahame Sydney and dated 2003 in brushpoint lower right 505mm x 405mm Estimate $45,000 - $55,000

Set in the rugged, untamed expanse of the North Otago landscape, Water Trough speaks to the ideals of a pastoral existence and the importance of a respect for the environment on which we subsist.

Sydney is somewhat of a lone figure in New Zealand’s cultural history, who, throughout the course of his career, has woven a narrative that is untold elsewhere in the history of New Zealand art. Sydney’s practice refers to a time in when the landscape was vital to our population’s way of life—a time before mass urbanisation.

Despite the fact that the artist’s landscapes rarely depict any signs of human life, they are, in fact, deeply human. While it is devoid of any form of life, Water Trough speaks to the ideals of a pastoral existence and the importance of respect for the land and environment, which, despite societal advances, will always be integral to our survival. Set in the rugged, untamed expanse of the North Otago landscape, Water Trough describes scenery that it close to Sydney’s heart.

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