5 minute read

Foreword

from Twenty, July 2023

from Twenty, July 2023, page 103

Terry Stringer The Nature of P...

Twenty is a very special catalogue that has been a labour of love for the art team. It includes works by artists who have had strong success at auction recently, and whose investment value continues to rise. The idea for the catalogue arose from a string of auction records set by Webb’s over the last year.

The first set came at the Bank of New Zealand Art Collection auction. We anticipated this auction would be successful; however, the results were unprecedented. New records were set for a slew of artists, some slightly unexpected, such as Julian Dashper, A. Lois White and Robin White. While this was an incredible auction, we knew that at least some of the success was due to the provenance of the collection, so we did not yet take the results as gospel.

Tasha Jenkins Manager, Art

Then in November we held our final Works of Art auction of 2022, which also saw fantastic results. We reset the auction record for Milan Mrkusich. Another example was a group of four stunning Louise Henderson paintings that were included in the catalogue. All the works reached excellent prices, with the largest, Birds in Trees, setting a new price record for Henderson.

However, the real highlight of the November auction for me was the sale of Spring Cleaning by Adele Younghusband. We had seen success with a series of woodcut prints by this artist at the Bank of New Zealand Art Collection auction, but the rarity of this large-scale oil painting was on another level. We set an estimate of $50,000–$60,000; however, the painting realised a hammer price of $232,607, completely resetting the auction record for Younghusband’s work.

The success of these works confirmed a trend the team had begun noticing with the Bank of New Zealand Art Collection auction: that artists who had previously flown under the radar for a long time were finally getting recognised by the market. While artists such as Henderson, Younghusband, Mrkusich, Dashper, A. Lois White and Robin White have always been admired by artists and art historians, they had not seen such commercial success before. Our Works of Art auction in March this year saw another new record for Teuane Tibbo, another artist who fits this category. While there are art trends that come and go, I think that what we are seeing here feels more like a conscious effort from the market to appreciate artists whose work has been previously overlooked.

Our team wanted to celebrate these successes by creating a small curated catalogue of only 20 works. The aim was to feature artists whose investment level has risen considerably in a short period of time. We built a list of artists who fit this criteria, including a number of contemporary practitioners who have seen recent auction success, such as Liz Maw, Peter Stichbury, Richard Killeen, Andrew McLeod, Fiona Pardington and Michael Parekōwhai. While these artists are still practising, over the past few years they have become secondary-market mainstays. The success of single-owner auctions Melting Moments and Goods and Services, which both featured works by Maw, McLeod, Killeen and Pardington, is a testament to the ongoing appeal of these artists and their work.

It is difficult to pick favourites from only 20 works, and harder still when they are all this excellent. As there are only 20 we wanted them to be fantastic examples of each artist. However, I do have a few personal standouts.

The first is the wondrous October by Louise Henderson. While working at Webb’s over the past five years I have come to admire Henderson’s work more and more, and this painting is one of the finest examples I have seen. It is part of a series of 12 works by Henderson, all named after the months of the year. I remember seeing the work for the first time displayed during the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki Henderson retrospective. The incredible scale of October means the delicious colours almost engulf you when standing before it.

Sea Region by Gretchen Albrecht is another highlight. It encapsulates everything you would want from a 1970s Albrecht stained canvas. A small 1970s watercolour by Albrecht was included in one of the first sales I worked on at Webb’s, and I have always had a fondness for them. Sea Region was purchased from Barry Lett Galleries in 1977, and has remained in the same collection ever since. It is a privilege to bring a work like this to market.

My final pick is the remarkable Adele Younghusband work Singing Girls. It is a favourite not only because it shows Younghusband’s adeptness at form, composition and colour, but because of the story behind how it was consigned.

It was about a week before entries closed for Twenty and we had not yet consigned a Younghusband work. We had been advertising and contacting everyone we knew who might have one for the last few months, but to no avail. As Younghusband was one of the key artists whose success inspired the idea of the sale, I was determined to feature her in the catalogue. Singing Girls was purchased from Webb’s in 2016, and we had previously reached out to the owner but at that time they were not interested in relinquishing the work. I decided to try my luck again, and my sheer will must have been palpable because this time they agreed to sell the painting. It was the last work we consigned for the Twenty catalogue and is truly the cherry on top of a fantastic line-up.

Twenty will be the first live art auction held at our Te Aro gallery in Wellington. After two years in this space, it now feels like the perfect time to hold a live art auction in the capital. Our fantastic Wellington team Karen Rigby and Mark Hutchins-Pond have built a very strong community and we know that our astute Wellington collectors will appreciate this specially curated selection. Before travelling down for the auction, the works will be on view at our Auckland gallery from Tuesday 20 until Saturday 24 June. They will then be on view in Wellington from Wednesday 24 June up until the auction, which will take place on Wednesday 5 July at 6.30pm.

I hope these stories have given some insight into how the Twenty catalogue came to be, and what it means for our team at this moment in time. As always, it was an absolute pleasure putting together the following pages for you.