Auctioneers Rake In Fees

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday July 2, 2005

PETER FISH

A mark-up of 30 per cent or so means their sales aren't always a bargain.

Do art auctioneers charge too much? It's a vexed question here and elsewhere, it seems. With a 20 per cent buyer's premium now common, and sellers paying a minimum 10 per cent and sometimes 15 per cent for the privilege of putting their art through auction, that's a minimum 30 per cent "spread" the auction house makes on each item sold. That's akin to some gallery and retail mark-ups. Certainly auctions are not always a bargain-hunter's paradise.

And as if an overall 30-35 per cent mark-up wasn't enough, auction vendors face extras including insurance and photography.

Perhaps the art auction business may have more cachet than selling real estate, but real estate commissions - paid by the vendor - are less than 5 per cent.

There are other imposts, too, on art auction customers - like the 10 per cent GST that applies to the auctioneer's charges, plus a 1 per cent levy usually applied if buyers pay via credit card. Of course some charges can be waived if the auctioneer desperately wants to sell your collection - as happened with the Foster's art collection in May.

But we must remember GST is embedded in all gallery and dealer sales - and it's by no means unknown for dealers to charge double or triple what they paid.

Perhaps, like Foster's canny boss Trevor O'Hoy, substantial art auction customers should do more to push the envelope, bargaining hard on vendor commissions - maybe even on buyer premiums.

Caveat vendor

In the UK, auction charges for modestly priced items can swallow up almost 70 per cent, and the buyer can end up paying more than double what the vendor actually gets. Britain's Antiques Trade Gazette notes that a new type of "consumer friendly" catalogue introduced by Christie's at its South Kensington salerooms provides illustrations of every item offered. Nice touch for buyers and browsers, you might say.

But under this system vendors pay a flat ##15 charge ($35) for a postage-stamp-sized photo, plus a ##30 handling charge, as well as a 15 per cent commission and of course value-added tax - the UK equivalent of our GST. On a ##200 painting, the Gazette points out, a vendor pays almost ##90 in various fees while the buyer pays a further ##47.

As for Christie's colourful catalogues, they've been dubbed magalogues and resemble the upmarket homes journal Country Life - except the magalogues cost ##10 and Country Life is just ##3.

Best dressed

Australian public galleries may have missed their chance to add to their holdings of works by the great English designer Christopher Dresser at the major sale of his work held in Edinburgh in April.

The sale, and the failure of some of the major pieces, was discussed in this column.

But one state gallery had the jump on the Edinburgh sale.

The National Gallery of Victoria a couple of years ago managed to secure one of the rarest and most seminal Dresser pieces, the ebony handled diagonal toast rack in silver plate made by James Dixon & Sons.

Designed in 1879, the NGV toast rack is one of only two known.

The one that came up in Edinburgh was from the collection of Andrew McIntosh Patrick, who apparently paid a massive ##23,000 a decade ago for what was then believed to be the only one of its type.

The emergence of a second example may have affected the price of the Edinburgh toast rack, which brought ##22,000 plus premium - equivalent to $62,000 all up.

It's not known what the NGV paid, but now may be a good time to hike the insurance valuation on the piece - an undoubted masterpiece of modernistic design.

Certainly it suggests an astute move by then NGV decorative art curator Christopher Menz - who now heads the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Bargains aplenty

Maybe it was the chilly conditions with intermittent rain; maybe it was the presale estimates, which were on the ambitious side. But Sotheby's auction of the Gordon and Dorothy Maitland collection in Paddington on Monday turned into a flea market sale towards the end, with bargains galore.

Clearly much of the material was unreserved because among the silver and ceramics numerous items went for between half or one-third of the lower estimate. It's an auction rule of thumb that the reserve price on a lot (the lowest price the vendor will accept) is usually set at or near the lower end of the presale estimate.

Among the cheapies were a modern Sheffield silver flatware (cutlery) service for 12 that brought $336 including premium (estimate $800 to $1200), a Birmingham 1919 silver photo frame $216 ($600-$900), and a pair of Dresden 1910 porcelain figures $102 ($300-$500). Even Bunnykins failed to charm, with a group of figurines fetching a half-estimate $108.

Furniture fared better, with a 19th century sarcophagus-shaped wine cooler fetching a triple-estimate $7800, while a pair of mahogany break-front low bookcases with glazed doors brought $11,400. But two tartan armchairs went for a giveaway $60 compared with a $500 to $800 estimate.

Many of the Maitlands' traditional landscapes and still lifes found a new home, though few significantly exceeded estimates. Among those that did were James R. Jackson's "Narrabeen Lakes" at $21,600, Robert Johnson's "Pittwater" at $9000 and Vida Lahey's "Desert Peas" at $7440.

Sold close to estimate were Norman Lindsay's "The Rehearsal" at $12,600, Rubery Bennett's "Hawkesbury River, Windsor", at $13,200, and Adrian Feint's "Arrangement in Red" at $10,800.

A number of other works went unsold in a sale that looked distinctly patchy towards the end.

Gifts to Greece

London antiquities dealer James Ede, who has visited Australia to value ancient art in the Nicholson Museum at Sydney University - has been making headlines in British and Greek papers for handing back a 2500-year-old statuette to Greek authorities.

Ede bought the bronze kouros, an 11cm figure of a youth, from the wife of a Greek collector who had lived in Switzerland for many years. It had apparently been acquired in good faith. Research quickly showed that it was once in the museum on the Aegean island of Samos.

Ede, who chairs Charles Ede Ltd in London and heads the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art, flew to Athens to return the piece, which is estimated to be valued at #30,000. He also turned down an offered reward.

Greek authorities hailed the return of the kouros, which had been removed during World War II, saying the restitution should send a message to the British Museum about returning the Parthenon Marbles.

© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

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