Million-Dollar Men
What gets an artwork over the magic $1 million mark — and how often do those big sales happen? Kim Knight speaks to local auction houses after another record-breaking night.
New Zealand’s million-dollar artist club has a new member. Don Binney’s oil painting of a kōtuku in flight over a West Auckland beach sold for $1,110,440 last week at Art+Object auction house.
It’s just the eighth local artwork ever to top $1m at auction and puts Binney (who died in 2012) in an elite club alongside three other men — Charles Goldie, Colin McCahon and Michael Parekowhai — whose paintings and sculpture have also smashed that ceiling.
Ben Plumbly, Art+Object director and auctioneer, told the Weekend Herald that bidding on the Binney started at $400k. By the $700k mark, three people were still in the race — one on the phone and two online.
“The painting sold to the internet,” says auctioneer Plumbly. “$1.1m plus with the click of a button.”
Plumbly had initially estimated the painting at between $550,000 and $850,000 — the previous highest auction sale price for a Binney was $711,000, fetched at Webbs in December.
“There are people at the moment who are increasingly willing to pay a premium for the best examples of an artist’s work,” Plumbly says.
According to the Australian and New Zealand Art Sales digest, seven of the top auction sales by artists from Aotearoa have occurred in the past two years.
Just one of those sales was for a work by a living artist — in November, a bidder paid $1.9m for Michael Parekowhai’s A Peak in Darien ,a bronze sculpture of a bull on a piano.
“We’ve had a bizarre moment over the past year or so that has manifested in some phenomenal activity in the sale room,” says Plumbly.
“It’s the Covid-related moment that resulted in a lot of our clients not being able to travel so much, so we’ve had a far greater captive audience . . . and in our industry, it self-perpetuates and snowballs.
“When vendors see that works are selling well, it’s natural that the types of paintings you seldom see become available, because vendors feel like they’ll find their market.”
The magic formula for a $1m-plus sale?
“Rarity is inextricably linked to value,” says Plumbly.
“There are tiers of value in the way we operate. At the bottom rung of the ladder are prints or multiples — multiple chances to acquire a work. The next step up is works on paper or watercolours and, finally, you have fully realised paintings that are considered by the market to be, for that artist, a definitive statement.”
Plumbly said $1m-plus sales were still relatively rare and although 2021 was an unprecedented year for New Zealand art auction houses — $62m worth of art changed hands, more than twice what had ever been previously achieved — he sensed the market was pulling back.
“With rising interest rates, increased inflation and a softening housing market, we expect things to settle back a little and become a touch more buyer-friendly.
“However, as we witnessed on Tuesday, the market for the best quality and rarest works will always be strong.”
Don Binney’s Heron’s Departure, New Spring, Te Henga was signed and dated 1964, the year it was also exhibited at Auckland City Art Gallery. Plumbly says the new owner is a private collector from Auckland and the previous owners had bought the painting in the 1990s.
“For a lot of vendors it’s not so much a matter of cashing up. Something that is seldom spoken about is the custodial responsibility that comes with owning something like this.
“Sometimes, artworks can get to a certain point in value where, for some collectors, they become potentially more burdensome.”
Top-level buyers, he says, ask
[Don Binney’s] painting sold to the internet. $1.1m plus with the click of a button.
Ben Plumbly, Art+Object
themselves: “If I don’t get it, how long will it be until another one of a similar quality comes up? And they might wait 30 or 40 years.”
Auckland-born Don Binney was an environmentalist famous for his bird imagery, and spent a considerable amount of time at Bethells Te Henga. The $1.1m painting’s subject matter, provenance and quality had all combined to push up its value, Plumbly said.
“Bethells Te Henga was really Don Binney’s turangawaewae. He was a devout environmentalist and bird watcher and his best paintings are considered to be of that part of the wild west coast region of Auckland, where he spent so much time.
“His best works are considered to be from the mid-1960s, when people perceive he was at the height of his powers, and the kōtuku or white heron is an important spiritual bird for Māori — it’s the harbinger of spring and sightings of it are rare.”
NEW ZEALAND’S next million-dollar auction artist? All bets are on Bill Hammond, with Frances Hodgkins hot favourite to become the first female artist to smash the canvas ceiling.
Hammond, most famous for his bird paintings, is the “obvious” prediction, says Art+Object’s Ben Plumbly.
The Christchurch-based painter died last January. In November, his painting Melting Moments II entered the “top 10” local auction sales list, fetching $918,375 at Webbs.
Plumbly says a million-dollar plus Hammond sale is “simply a matter of the right painting coming up”.
Meanwhile: “Ralph Hotere and Shane Cotton are also heading into that realm. And in terms of female painters, Gretchen Albrecht and Robin White are the two living artists who are the most likely candidates — their prices have seen substantial increases in recent times. But, in my opinion, it’s likely to be Frances Hodgkins in the not-too-distant future. Again, it’s just a matter of the right painting coming up for sale.”
Richard Thomson, International Art Centre director and auctioneer, also predicts Hodgkins — a landscape and still life artist who died in 1947 — “will likely make that threshold” in the near future.
“As will Rita Angus and Bill Hammond, both of whom are fairly close to that figure as it stands — all have already exchanged in that threshold as far as private sales go. Auction prices will follow. As far as living painters are concerned, we could see Michael Smither, Sir Grahame Sydney, Gretchen Albrecht or even Shane Cotton hit the $1m mark during their lifetimes.”
In 2016, Thompson became the first auctioneer to take a local painting over the million-dollar mark, when Charles Goldie’s portrait of Arawa chieftain Wharekauri Tahuna went for $1,339,500 (including buyer’s premium). “As an auctioneer, that was a golden moment.”
Charles Ninnow, Webbs director of art, anticipates adding new works to the $1m-plus list, when two “very important” works by McCahon go under the hammer at the upcoming Bank of New Zealand art collection auction in September.
“There are also works by Gordon Walters and Tony Fomison that have the potential to do this. They carry much lower estimates — $600,000-$900,000 each — but will be hotly contested.”