Australia

BONHAMS have secured a major art collection that puts them squarely at the centre of the Australian auctions scene once more.

SYDNEY auction house Menzies Arts Brands recorded the highest price ever paid for an Australian artwork when Sidney Nolan's First Class Marksman 1946 sold to an anonymous phone bidder for Aus$4.5m (£2.9m) at their latest sale.

AUSTRALIA has reversed its previous government’s decision and introduced its own version of the Artist’s Resale Right.

IT’S all change among Australia’s leading auctioneers as Goodmans, linked to Bonhams since 2003, are to adopt the Sotheby’s brand instead.

Leonard Joel auctioneers of Melbourne, Australia, are appealing to vendors to consign art, antiques and jewellery to auction and donate the proceeds to the Victorian Disaster Appeal to help victims of the Victorian bushfires.

The Reserve Bank of Australia are to challenge eBay on their decision to make PayPal mandatory on all sales listings. The RBA says it will “shortly be holding discussions with PayPal [an eBay subsidiary] with a view to seeking the removal of these rules”.

EBAY Australia have decided to drop the case for PayPal exclusivity ahead of a decision on the matter fro the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

BONHAMS have expanded their Australian operations by buying Melbourne auction house Leonard Joel.

A BROAD range of antiques will be available at the University of Sydney Antique Fair on June 8 and 9.

Auctioneer unhappy about need to opt out at short notice

In the same way that Americans hold any material relating to the Pilgrim Fathers in the highest esteem, so anything associated with Australia’s earliest European settlers carries a huge premium for its domestic market.

“WE will make a name for ourselves and Australia tomorrow.” This was how Captain Shout fired up his band of troops the night before the assault at Gallipoli in the First World War.

AUSTRALIA have rejected Droit de Suite.

THE Australian government has acted to protect indigenous artists following media reports that exposed exploitation and corruption in the Aboriginal art world.

WHAT'S up Down Under? The very day Christie’s announce that they are downsizing in Australia by ceasing to hold sales there, Bonhams and Goodman say they are expanding operations.

Dreweatt Neate Fine Art have arranged a major private treaty sale to the National Library of Australia, on behalf of a prominent UK family, of a historically important folio of watercolours.

SCIENTISTS in Australia have developed a new method of identifying of ancient Chinese ceramics which could play a major role in the battle against fakes.

BEST known for their period silver by the master English silversmiths, Mayfair dealers Marks Antiques are also making a name for themselves with Fabergé, and, on February 18 and 19, hold a selling Fabergé exhibition at Martyn Cook Antiques, Queen Street, Woollahra, Sydney.

ACQUIRED for £52,000 by the Australian businessman John Schaeffer at Christie’s, London in June 1996, this striking oil on canvas, right, A Dancing Athlete with an Olive Branch, by Frederic Leighton (1830-1896), comes under the hammer again on May 15.

AUSTRALIAN auction group Menzies have merged the art departments at their two leading rooms. With a combined art auction turnover for 2003 expected to exceed $35m, Deutscher-Menzies of Melbourne will now conduct all art sales previously split between them and the Sydney-based Lawson-Menzies.