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Cows and cockatoos, waterfalls and Wimmera scenes, city streets and sails
on the harbour they've covered the walls of John Fairfax Publications for
decades.
But yesterday, more than 90 works in the art collection assembled by the
media company were scattered to institutions and private collectors in an
auction estimated to have fetched a total of more than $2.5 million.
The Fairfax corporate art collection of Australian paintings went under the
hammer at Paddington Town Hall.
About 120 people attended the Sotheby's auction, bidding for 93 lots.
A painting by Russell Drysdale, Deserted Out-station, fetched the highest
price, going to a member of the Fairfax family, Caroline Simpson, for $540,000.
Painted in 1945, the 86 centimetre by 111.7cm oil on canvas was the result
of Drysdale's visit to the NSW outback that year.
Warwick Fairfax, the proprietor of the Herald, had asked Drysdale to
accompany a reporter to the bush to record the severe drought of the 1940s.
Drysdale completed a number of paintings, including Deserted Out-station.
Purchased by Fairfax in 1945, the painting shows skeletal-like trees and
twisted, surrealistic sheets of corrugated iron.
Mrs Simpson, the sister of James Fairfax, said last night she was very happy
with her purchase. She believed the story of the present drought and the
tragedy to the great pastoral industry of NSW had not been at all adequately
dealt with by the journalists of the Herald.
Another painting with strong historical links to John Fairfax Sydney Opera
House (from Dawes Point) attracted a bid of only $80,000. The estimate for the
Lloyd Rees painting was $100,000 to $150,000. Commissioned to mark the
sesquicentenary celebrations of the Herald in 1981, the oil on canvas shows the
Opera House sails billowing like white tutus against a summery blue sky.
Some of the paintings in the auction were winners of The Sydney Morning
Herald art prize, such as John Firth-Smith's 1977 oil on canvas, Out There:
First on the Harbour, which sold for $15,000.
Many of the paintings were collected in the 1970s and 1980s during James
Fairfax's chairmanship of the company, and a large number were purchased from
the Thirty Victoria Street Gallery. The gallery's proprietor, Frank McDonald,
said on Saturday it was a little disappointing that the collection should be
sold, as it was a part of the company's image.
The Fairfax collection included two landscapes by Arthur Boyd. His Wimmera
Landscape, painted around 1950, fetched $220,000. Boyd's Across the Shoalhaven
River sold for $84,000 to Sydney dealer Eva Breuer.
Sidney Nolan's 1955 painting, Kelly in Bush, purchased by Fairfax in 1979,
went for $130,000.
The Sali Herman 1944 painting Suburbia sold to Aussie Home Loans chief John
Symond for $13,000.
John Fairfax is donating 11 portraits and two sculptures of the Fairfax
family to the National Portrait Gallery.
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