The sale of the contents of Iona in Sydney on March 8/9 marked another Sydney success for Artvisory with single-vendor auctions in our harbour city. Artvisory has been instructed to sell a number of high-profile single-owner auctions in Sydney, but this was perhaps the biggest, and certainly the most complex of them.
The auction presented a number of challenges, typical of large single-owner auctions, not least of which was the fact that the owners had a large number of items that had been in long-term storage, which they needed to include. The vendors also had to decide on which items to keep for their new home, in a relatively tight time-frame, after their prestigious property Iona had sold. The process of what to keep and what to sell is never an easy process for any vendors and this proved to be the case here, but ultimately close to 450 items were included in the two-part auction.
A considerable level of re-styling was required when everything was brought together and a fair degree of restoration and cleaning was also needed for those items brought out from storage to present the collection to its best advantage.
Leading up to the auction, Artvisory presented a series of viewings, both private and public, onsite at Iona and the results were strong for many areas. Especially in the field of antique furniture, which as we all know has been up and down in recent times, but single-owner auctions often defy market trends, and so it was the case with this auction, where many of the top lots went overseas, or to buyers outside of Sydney.
The highest price for the furniture collection was paid for an 18th century George III period mahogany Carlton House desk, which must have set a record price paid at auction in this country for a desk of its type, when it sold for $62,880.00 selling to a London buyer on the telephone. The second highest price was for a rare painted leather room screen dating to 18th century France, that the auctioneer Paul Sumner had sold to the vendors decades prior, and this was keenly contested by multiple international bidders, ultimately falling to a Parisian buyer at a multiple estimate AUD$50,400 inc bp.
The live auction at the Intercontinental Double Bay, commenced with the Australian and International art collection, which was a virtual sell- out and where a new auction record was set for the work of Janet Cumbrae Stewart. The art collection results were led by Rupert Bunny’s beautiful small oil painting of the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris circa 1909, which attracted multiple bidders, chasing it up to AUD$138,600.00 inc bp. It sold ultimately to a Sydney private collector who attended the auction in person and who was visibly excited to win the auction of this work.
The auction total exceeded AUD$1.2 million and was about 95% sold by lot and well over its pre-auction total of estimates.
