A multi-panel painting that suffered the indignity of being broken up for individual sale has been reunited and could fetch well over $1 million when it goes to auction in Sydney.
The nine-metre magnum opus, the heart land, 2013-14, is by acclaimed Sydney contemporary artist Del Kathryn Barton. It carries a pre-sale estimate of $1.2 million to $1.6 million.
The Sydney vendor is the person who carefully bought and reunited all five panels of the work and has enjoyed it hanging on his wall at home, according to Menzies auction house chairman, Cameron Menzies.
Now the vendor is ready to part with the work, and it will be offered in a single-lot sale on November 27. Menzies alerted public art galleries to the impending sale about a month ago, given they have the wall space to show a work of such epic dimensions.
Any private buyer will need a very large wall to do it justice.
the heart land‘s fascinating history began when it was shown in Dark Heart, the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Barton’s dealers Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery then featured the work at the Melbourne Art Fair, and in August 2014 Sydney businessman Damien Vass acquired it for $252,000.
The contract of sale to Vass stipulated that the five panels of the heart land were to be kept intact. The panels were not to be broken up for individual sale, and this obligation was to be binding on all future owners of the work.
But when a Sydney collector approached Barton to sign the back of one of the panels, which he had bought in good faith from a Woollahra art gallery in March 2015, Barton called in her lawyers.
Barton’s legal team wrote to Damien Vass, pressing their client’s moral rights.
“You have disrupted the work’s flow and rhythm; you have unbalanced it,” the letter said. “Ms Barton now regards the work as broken and vandalised and you should not underestimate either the hurt and outrage you have caused Ms Barton, or how seriously she views this matter.”
The letter was leaked anonymously to The Sunday Telegraph, which published the story in May 2015 under the headline, “Painter has art attack after buyer ‘ruins’ work”.
Vass sued Nationwide News, publisher of The Sunday Telegraph. But in 2021, Justice Guy Parker of the Supreme Court of NSW ruled in a judgement that Vass had indeed sold off a panel of the heart land.
Justice Parker said Mr Vass “was in fact responsible for breaking up the work and his denial of that imputation was fraudulent”. Justice Parker dismissed Vass’s claim and ordered him to pay Nationwide News’ costs.
All these years later, the heart land has re-emerged in public as a complete work. It goes on view at Menzies’ Sydney premises from November 21, having already been on view in Melbourne.
The artwork is “universally regarded as one of the artist’s most important and ambitious paintings”, the catalogue said. Women and wildlife are arrayed across the canvas in an electrical storm of almost frighteningly heightened fecundity.
The painting is in synthetic polymer paint, watercolour and ink on canvas. The work’s provenance (or history of ownership) states that it was sold by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery to a private collection, and that it then went to “private collection(s), Sydney [as five separate panels]”, before being acquired from there by a “private collection, Sydney”.
“I think the story here is that our vendor, who is an art collector and a philanthropist of the highest order, has gone to great lengths to reunite the five panels,” Cameron Menzies told Saleroom.
Prior to its auction of the heart land, Menzies will hold a large mixed-vendor auction in Melbourne on November 19. The auction is divided into two parts – Important Australian & International Art (lots 1 - 62), and The Frank and Janet South Collection (lots 63 - 103). Combined total estimates for the November 19 auction are $4,968,000 to $6,882,000.
The Important Australian & International Art sale is led by the highest-estimated artwork, Sidney Nolan’s Bridge Crossing, 1963-64 ($700,000 to $900,000). The vendor is Mrs Elizabeth Margaret Evatt, second wife of the renowned barrister Clive Evatt. Mr Evatt died in 2018.
Bill Nuttall and Annette Reeves, directors of Niagara Galleries in Melbourne, are the vendors of the work with the second-highest estimate, John Brack’s The Club, 1989. It is estimated at $500,000 to $700,000.
A William Robinson landscape, Fading Light, Springbrook to Beechmont, 2002, carries the third-highest estimate ($250,000 to $350,000).
Attracting a lot of interest is John Perceval‘s painting, Sunflowers (also known as van Gogh Sunflowers), c.1935, done when the Melbourne artist was in his teens. It’s a faithful copy of one of Vincent van Gogh’s famous series on the same motif.
Among contemporary offerings are a chilling work by the late Adam Cullen titled Self Portrait as Ned Kelly’s Death Mask, 2008 ($30,000 to $50,000), and Ben Quilty’s painting of a skull titled Sideways, 2021 ($30,000 to $40,000).
Works in The Frank and Janet South Collection include the beautiful Hydrangeas, c.1925, by Ethel Carrick ($40,000 to $50,000), and Laycock’s Jetty, 1957, by Arthur Boyd ($200,000 to $300,000).
Cameron Menzies said the Souths had been “ten pound Poms” who developed an educated interest in Australian art. The late Frank South was an accountant, and his widow is now parting with some of the works they lived with and loved.
Next week, Saleroom will preview Deutscher + Hackett’s November 26 Important Australian and International Fine Art auction.
