Australian Art

Christie's has sold Australian art since the 1960s both in Australia and London. The continuing strength of the market has produced exceptional prices including most recently £731,700 (AUD$1,6m) for Frederick McCubbin’s Sawing Timber in December 2007, London. Christie's typically hosts two annual sales in London to showcase the best of Australian art.

Privately negotiated sales have included Eugene von Guerard's magisterial colonial landscape View of Geelong, sold on behalf of the Lord Lloyd-Webber to the Geelong Gallery, Victoria, for £1.6m (A$3.9m), setting an auction record for any Australian painting and the second highest price for a privately negotiated sale of a painting to an Australian institution (August 2006). Previously, Christie's negotiated the sale of John Webber's Portrait of Captain Cook to the Australian National Portrait Gallery for A$5.3m (2000).

Christie's sales of Exploration & Travel at our King Street saleroom every September also offer works by Colonial and 19th century Australian artists, including early artists active in Australia, from the period of European discovery in the late 18th century and through the 19th century from colony to federation, including John Lewin, John Glover, Eugene von Guerard and Conrad Martens. Pioneering Australian photographers such as J.W. Lindt and Nicholas John Caire are also regularly featured.

Our London sales of Modern + Contemporary Australian Art in December aim to showcase a refined and fresh to the market collection of artworks sourced from UK and international collections. The sale focus is on works from the Heidelberg School and 19th Century Impressionist artists such as Streeton, McCubbin and Russell through to the great Australian painters of the post war period such as Nolan, Drysdale, Boyd, Blackman, Smart, Williams and Whiteley, and the leading exponents of contemporary Australian art from Arkley and Gascoigne to Rover Thomas and Emily Kngwarreye.