Sotheby’s May 09 Australian Art Auction Review pt 2 - australianartmarket.com After the success of Sotheby’s sale of the Ken and Rona Eastaugh Collection the expectations of a successful sale for the Important Australian Art catalogue the following night (May 5) were high
surrealist landscape titled ‘Small Landscape’ which only managed to reach $240,000 against it’s $280,000 - $350,000 estimate before bidding stalled. A majority of the works that did sell were in the $10,000 to $70,000 bracket which has proven to be a very popular price range in many recent auctions. The works in this price range offered by Sotheby’s in this case were not particularly spectacular which is the most likely reason that many sold for below their estimate.
The combined total for both Sotheby’s auctions was a very healthy $4,494,680 (including items of furniture and dec arts from Ken and Rona Eastaugh collection) which I believe is partly due to Sotheby’s decision to hold two seperate smaller auctions. In a market where buyers are very cautions and more discerning a smaller catalogue or a larger catalogue broken up into two smaller catalogues would seem to be the rational approach for the auction houses to take. All in all the results achieved by Sotheby’s are encouraging and show that there is still plenty of money and plenty of buyers out there for the right works and the right prices.
**all prices and figures are the hammer price without buyers premium unless otherwise stated
**Nicholas Forrest is an art market analyst, art critic and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. He is the founder of http://www.artmarketblog.com, writes the art column for the magazine Antiques and Collectibles for Pleasure and Profit and contributes to many other publications.
