“Chlorine from the pool” has delivered the most expensive painting ever sold at auction in Australia back to market just two years after its sale.
, who died in April, as company director in the firm’s auction catalogue. But Menzies amiably cautions Saleroom from reading too much into it.He does acknowledge, however, that “inevitably” he will play an increasingly greater role in the company.
Menzies will continue to run his own Melbourne-based consultancy, Five Fifty Art Advisory, while keeping an eye on the family auction business.Menzies second auction for the year, on June 29 in Melbourne, is a solid 130-lot sale with noteworthy works by artists including Nora Heysen, Vida Lahey, Margaret Olley, Clement Meadmore, Margaret Preston, Albert Namatjira, Sidney Nolan, William Robinson and Garry Shead.
“It is like coming home,” O’Brien said of Rome. He lived in the eternal city until his death in 1996.is on the secondary market for first time, and comes with a prestigious exhibition history, shown at the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ retrospectivein Melbourne in 1973. One need not be an observant Catholic to appreciate the work’s peculiar gifts.