There are a lot of public art galleries in New Zealand, but I have focused here on four of the biggest and most important. Some collections are easier to search than others, so I may well have missed a few acquisitions. Still, I think this gives a pretty good sense of what was added to major public collections in 2025.

Te Papa

Te Papa’s 2025 acquisitions included works by Cora-Allan Lafaiki Twiss, Constance Gordon-Cumming and Brent Harris, along with other additions of art books, drawings and decorative arts.

The acquisition that stands out most is Cora-Allan’s Mauri series, a set of bark cloth works made as part of her journey around New Zealand by boat, retracing the late eighteenth-century voyages of James Cook. Twiss talks about the works in her own words on the Te Papa website. Twiss also has wider institutional visibility at the moment with the Mauri series included in Te Papa’s Slow Burn exhibition as well as Twiss having a solo exhibition at City Gallery Wellington.

Te Papa also acquired four works by Constance Gordon-Cumming from the 1870s. Gordon-Cumming was a travel writer and painter whose work across the South Pacific still sits in an interesting place, part colonial record, part artistic document. It is notable that she appears here and in Auckland Art Gallery’s acquisitions as well.

Then there is Brent Harris’s I weep my mother’s breasts from 1996, acquired from the artist’s personal collection. Ray Edgar’s interview with Harris in the Sydney Morning Herald explores the psychologically charged backstory to this painting in greater detail.

Auckland Art Gallery

Auckland Art Gallery acquired a number of works in 2025, but there are three in particular that stand out.

The first is Judy Millar’s One-Two, acquired by the Patrons of Auckland Art Gallery. Millar is hardly an unknown quantity, with her previous representation of NZ at the Venice Biennale, along with numerous other accolades. Instead, it is a vote of confidence in her continuing practice. The painting is bold, energetic and unmistakably hers. It’s described as “the hovering of two dynamics… the world of the earth / the world of the painting”, and honestly, it reminds me of the inter-dimensional gate to the upside down in the tv show Stranger Things.

Alongside that sits Ruth Ige’s Queen from the 7th earth (part 2), also acquired by the Patrons. This feels like it could be one of the smartest acquisitions made anywhere in the country in 2025. The work has real authority. It is ethereal, theatrical and self-possessed, with a faceless central figure that holds the whole painting together. I can’t wait to see this in person.

The gallery also bought Dorothy Kate Richmond’s Outside the Pa at Dunbar Sloane in November. The work sold for a hammer price of $65,000 against a high estimate of $35,000, setting a new auction record for Richmond’s works. When a public institution elects to buy in at that level, it is effectively confirming Richmond’s place in the history of New Zealand art is being reassessed upward.

Auckland Art Gallery also acquired four works by Constance Gordon-Cumming, echoing Te Papa. Other additions included Elizabeth Newman, Amanda Watson, Ruth Cleland, Vivian Lynn, Milli Jannides, Brett Graham, Giovanni Intra, Angela Tiatia, Peata Larkin, Stewart Maclennan, Carl Sydow and John Hoyte, along with Aboriginal works by Aileen Napaljarri Long and Nola Campbell.

The gallery also extended its collection of photography with works by James Chapman-Taylor and Steve Rumsey. It also acquired works by Mark Adams, whose solo exhibition was on at Auckland Art Gallery last year and is now at Christchurch Art Gallery. Finally, it also acquired photographs by Victoria Ginn taken while she was imprisoned in Afghanistan.

Christchurch Art Gallery

Christchurch Art Gallery acquired Robyn Kahukiwa’s Girl in a Bush Shirt at Webb’s in March 2025, just before the artist’s death the following month. The work sold for $52,580 including premium, well above its high estimate of $28,000, and is now the second-highest auction result for Kahukiwa.

The gallery also acquired Raymond McIntyre’s Street in Saint-Valery-sur-Somme. McIntyre spent much of his life living and working in London. Just across the English Channel, Saint-Valery-sur-Somme was a popular spot for artists with Frances Hodgkins being based there around the same time as McIntyre. His works, especially quality ones, are relatively scarce.

Another notable move was the transfer of Buck Nin’s Green Valley from Christchurch City Libraries. Christchurch Art Gallery already owns the better The Mamakus, so this builds depth rather than simply adding a name that has been popular at auction in recent years.

Other acquisitions included works by Madison Kelly, Bev Moon, Andrew Hamilton, George Turner, Maud Winifred Sherwood, Betty Curnow, Allen Maddox, Carl Sydow, Leslie Greener, Emma Fitts, Rickard Tawhai, Louie Zalk-Neale, Leo Bensemann, Claudia Pond Eyley and Janine Randerson.

Dunedin Public Art Gallery

Dunedin Public Art Gallery acquired a work by Shona Rapira Davies, No not my son not cannon fodder, made in 1986. The description is of an oil on board in three panels, but it is yet to be digitised online, so it is still unclear exactly what it looks like. Even so, it catches the eye immediately because Rapira Davies is so strongly associated with sculpture. Until the image is published it is hard to say more, but it is one of the more intriguing acquisitions on this list.

Another acquisition is Michael Smither’s Joseph with Two Teeth, gifted by the actor Sam Neill in memory of his mother. It is a strong, warm, very human Smither, the kind of picture that reminds you how effective he can be at capturing domestic life without overplaying it.

There were also interesting acquisitions of contemporary works by Angela Tiatia and Kathryn Madill.

Jim and Mary Barr were major New Zealand art collectors. Many works from their collection were gifted to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2025 including works by Marie Shannon, Saskia Leek, Martin Creed and Box Codax, Dane Mitchell, Julian Dashper, Toss Woollaston, John Reynolds, Rohan Wealleans, Gillian Wearing, Francis Upritchard, August Ward, Ronnie van Hout, Merylyn Tweedie, Ali Senescall, Michael Smither, Peter Robinson, Barnard McIntyre, Peter Peryer and Jeffrey Harris.

What stands out

A few observations of who and what jumps out…

First, Cora-Allan and Mark Adams look like artists with real institutional momentum. In both cases, not only are they increasing their presence in public collections, but each also have solo exhibitions currently on display improving their wider visibility.

Second, Angela Tiatia appears in more than one public collection. That is the sort of repeat acquisition pattern worth noticing. It often marks the point where interest starts becoming consensus. But, some caution is needed, as artists working in video often struggle to translate institutional acclaim into commercial success.

Third, it is striking to see public galleries acquiring Robyn Kahukiwa and Dorothy Kate Richmond at the same time as their auction results move materially higher. The public and private markets do not always move together, but when they do, it usually means something.

And finally, my own picks: Peata Larkin and Ruth Ige. Their works resonate with me, and I would happily place either on my walls.

Australian Fine Art Auction 2026 Insights

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Year-on-year momentum is a useful lens for collectors because it shows where attention and money moved, often more clearly than headline totals. It highlights which artists gained visibility, saw stronger bidding, or benefited from a run of high-quality works coming to market. Many of these shifts are supply-driven, triggered by estate sales, single-owner collections, or one-off masterpieces, so treat the results as a 2025 map of where competition intensified, where it cooled, and where opportunities may still exist, rather than evidence of sustained market trends.

Australia Contemporary (born 1945+)

The largest momentum shift in 2025 was Howard Arkley, who became the highest-selling artist of the year. Arkley has been a strong auction performer for some time, but 2025 moved to a different level with over $10m in sales (versus less than $1m in 2024) with four works in the top ten prices. This wasn’t simply more lots, it was a step-change in pricing for major paintings.

Outside Arkley, several Contemporary artists also strengthened. Bruce Armstrong moved into six-figure annual sales and has shown strong sell-through over the past five years. Rick Amor, Ben Quilty, and Criss Canning, all already established in six-figure territory, each roughly doubled sales year-on-year, with Amor setting an auction record for The Waiter at Menzies and Canning also setting a record for Gum Blossom from Pootilla at Smith & Singer.

Australia Post War (born 1911 – 1944)

William Robinson, James Gleeson and Pro Hart stand out in the Post War category for year on year increases. Though the jump is best read in context that each artist’s works had comparatively weak sales in 2024.

Australia Impressionist & Modern (born 1851 - 1910)

Impressionist & Modern artists saw the broadest momentum lift across multiple blue-chip names. William Dobell, Grace Cossington Smith, Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts, and Ian Fairweather each recorded $1m+ in sales and materially higher than 2024. With earlier-period artists, this kind of volatility is common because supply is thinner. But there is also a global shift in demand back towards artists from the 1800s with proven scarcity, quality and value.

McCubbin and Cossington Smith both particularly benefited from standout works: McCubbin’s Lime Tree sold for $1.5m at Leonard Joel, while Cossington Smith’s The Reader sold at Deutscher and Hackett and Chair and Drapery sold at Smith & Singer were among the strongest results for women artists in 2025.

A number of single-owner or estate sales also shaped the year’s momentum tables. These included the estate-related supply of Barry Humphries works, a large number of John Passmore works, and the Tony & Indra Deigan collection of Arthur Boyd prints (that they produced in partnership with Boyd). Conversely, the large Wolfgang Sievers sale in 2024 helps explain the sharp drop in 2025 activity for that artist.

On the downside, Margaret Preston, Elioth Gruner, and Tim Storrier recorded large falls after each exceeding $1m of sales in 2024. For Preston and Storrier, the key driver appears to be lack of top-quality supply in 2025. For Gruner, the decline was compounded by two high-priced works failing to sell, which materially reduced realised value.

In 2026, the key question is whether these momentum shifts persist and turn into more sustained trends or that these are single year blips at auction.

Methodology: To reduce noise, momentum increases are limited to artists with more than four works sold and over $20,000 in sales in 2025; momentum decreases are limited to artists with more than four works sold and over $20,000 in sales in 2024.

Rather than review the exhibition itself, I wanted to profile the women and non-binary artists working with photography whose works regularly appear at auction. Some names, such as Ans Westra and Fiona Pardington, will likely already be familiar. Others are less well known outside art circles. What links them is that each has a recognisable presence on the secondary market, offering a useful snapshot of how photography is valued in New Zealand.

While a number of the works by these artists have achieved six-figure results, many more come to auction at far more affordable prices. That is reflected in the prices below, with most median prices sitting under $10,000 and many closer to $1,000.

Marti Friedlander (1928 - 2016)
Auction Record: $24,255 | Median Price: $6,006

Marti Friedlander is one of New Zealand’s most important photographers, celebrated for images that captured both the country’s cultural figures and everyday life with rare sensitivity. She is especially associated with her portraits of artists and writers, but her work ranged much more widely than that, with her most expensive photograph at auction capturing a sheep drive in Eglinton Valley.

Ans Westra (1936 - 2023)
Auction Record: $23,152 | Median Price: $3,585

Ans Westra was one of New Zealand’s best-known social documentary photographers, and Washday at the Pa remains one of the defining and most debated photographic projects made in this country. Her strongest photographs are black-and-white images of everyday life with an immediacy that has made them part of the visual history of New Zealand.

Adrienne Martyn (b. 1950)
Auction Record: $1,802 | Median Price: $913

Adrienne Martyn is best known for black-and-white portraits, particularly of New Zealand artists, along with pared-back studies of architecture and urban surfaces. She gained recognition for her intimate portraits of prominent New Zealand artists and her precise, high-contrast documentations of empty interiors, abandoned buildings, and textured surfaces.

Anne Noble (b. 1954)
Auction Record: $18,760 | Median Price: $2,426

Anne Noble’s practice moves across a wide range of subjects, from convent interiors to Antarctica to her photographs of her daughter Ruby, Noble often brings a mix of closeness, curiosity and strangeness to her photographs.

Christine Webster (b. 1958)
Auction Record: $6,843 | Median Price: $483

Christine Webster is known for staged colour photographs that feel theatrical, psychologically charged and slightly destabilising. Rather than using photography simply to record the world, she has long used it to build symbolic, emotionally loaded scenes that sit somewhere between performance, dream and unease.

Marie Shannon (b. 1960)
Auction Record: $4,780 | Median Price: $1,770

Marie Shannon has spent decades making intimate, thoughtful work out of domestic interiors, everyday objects and the creative lives around her. Frequently utilising large-format, black-and-white photography, much of her recent output involves cataloging the studio archive of her late partner, the artist Julian Dashper.

Fiona Pardington (b. 1961)
Auction Record: $133,338 | Median Price: $20,617

Fiona Pardington is one of New Zealand’s most prolific and commercially successful contemporary photographers, internationally recognised for her innovative and meticulously composed images. Her large scale still lifes primarily document native birds of New Zealand (particularly the extinct huia), as well Maori taonga and life casts. She has been selected to represent New Zealand at the 2026 Venice Biennale.

Lisa Reihana (b.1964)
Auction Record: $94,433 | Median Price: $17,082

Lisa Reihana is one of New Zealand’s most internationally recognised contemporary artists, working across photography, video, and sculpture to examine colonialism and questions of identity through a contemporary Māori and Pacific perspective. She is best known for her 26 metre-wide panoramic video in Pursuit of Venus [infected] that brings to life Joseph Dufour’s Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique.

Ava Seymour (b. 1967)
Auction Record: $9,731 | Median Price: $879

Ava Seymour is best known for photographs and photo-collages that poke at the myths of suburban New Zealand. Her best-known series, Health, Happiness and Housing, overlays surreal figures in front of drab state housing employing dark humour to critique the social structures and domestic life of the inhabitants. She was the recipient of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship in 2001.

Ann Shelton (b. 1967)
Auction Record: $13,814 | Median Price: $7,845

Ann Shelton is a research-driven conceptual photographer whose works often draw on archives and overlooked histories. Her notable projects include jane says, a series documenting plants historically used by women to control fertility, and her earlier documentary work capturing Auckland's 1990s art scene.

Yvonne Todd (b. 1973)
Auction Record: $21,021 | Median Price: $2,408

Yvonne Todd first gained major attention after winning the inaugural Walters Prize in 2022. She has built one of the most distinctive photographic practices in New Zealand, creating highly staged portraits and still lifes that are glossy, awkward, and slightly unsettling.

Yuki Kihara (b. 1975)
Auction Record: $6,246 | Median Price: $1,880

Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans photography, performance, film, and sculpture to challenge dominant colonial narratives, gender narratives, and environmental crises. Accolades include a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, more recently, representation of New Zealand at the 2022 Venice Biennale with Paradise Camp, a celebrated project that "upcycled" Paul Gauguin's paintings using Fa'afafine models to reclaim Pacific visual history.

Roberta Thornley (b. 1985)
Auction Record: $6,606 | Median Price: $1,625

Roberta Thornley’s practice encompasses portraiture, landscape, and still life. She is recognised for her precise control of lighting and tonal contrast to explore themes of time, narrative, and physical states. Her notable projects include documentary portraits in Rwanda, the "A Serious Girl" series focused on physical recovery during her residency at Tylee Cottage in Whanganui, and recent medical photography at Waikato Hospital. She was the winner of the Marti Friedlander Photographic Award in 2017.

Note: Highest price is based on all publicly available auction results. Median price is based on works sold over the past five years.

2025 New Zealand Market Report | 2025 Australia Market Report

Women artists remain underrepresented in both the Australian and New Zealand auction markets, but 2025 offered some meaningful signs of progress. In Australia, works by women accounted for 18.2% of total sales value, broadly flat relative to recent years. In New Zealand, female artists accounted for approximately 19% of total auction sales value, up from 14% in 2021. Record prices and stronger mid-market representation suggest momentum is building, even if from a relatively low base.

Note: Sales have not been adjusted for currency. In practical terms, that means Australian sales are even higher relative to New Zealand than what’s depicted in the graph.

Headline Results

Despite women’s relatively modest overall market share, 2025 still delivered several major record-setting results.

In Australia, Emily Kame Kngwarreye became just the fourth female artist to have a work sell for more than $1 million AUD at auction, when Untitled (Awelye) sold at Deutscher and Hackett, also setting a new record for the artist. A new auction record was also set for Grace Cossington Smith with The Reader (The School Cape), which sold for just under $1 million AUD, also at Deutscher and Hackett. Both works now sit among the ten most expensive auction results for works by Australian women artists. Another record result came from Dorrit Black, whose Sicilian Mountain sold for $687,500 AUD at Smith & Singer, setting a new record for the artist.

New Zealand also produced an important milestone with the sale of Rita Angus’ Before the Demolition, which achieved $621,435 NZD at Art & Object. It was the second-highest price of the year overall, and notably the second-highest auction result ever for a female artist in New Zealand, with Angus also holding the national record. The next-highest result for a New Zealand woman was Louise Henderson’s Setting Sun Indian Ocean, which sold for $143,400 NZD at Webb’s. That is a strong result by New Zealand standards, but it still ranked only 36th in the New Zealand market by price in 2025.

Taken together, these results underline an important point: record prices are being set, but progress at the top remains concentrated. A small number of exceptional works can create the impression of rapid change, even when the wider market structure remains much the same.

Better progress in the mid and lower tiers

The clearest gains were not at the very top of the market, but further down the price ladder.

In Australia, women have accounted for roughly 11% of sales value above $500,000 AUD over the past five years. That improved to 14% in 2025, helped by the headline results noted above, but still below the overall figure of 18.2%. Representation has been strongest in the $100,000–$300,000 AUD range, averaging around 26% over the past five years, though easing to 23% in 2025.

New Zealand shows a similar pattern. Representation above $100,000 NZD remains limited, with women accounting for around 8% of value in that tier over the past five years, with little change overall. By contrast, gains have been stronger below the six-figure level, where women accounted for 26% of sales under $100,000 in 2025, up from 19% in 2021. Sell-through rates for female artists also improved to approximately 68%, marginally above those for male artists.

That is perhaps the most encouraging part of the picture. While the very top end remains stubbornly male-dominated, women are gaining ground across much of the middle market, where depth of demand matters more than a handful of standout trophy works.

Stronger representation in Contemporary art

Women continue to be better represented in Contemporary art than in other categories, although even there progress is uneven.

In Australia, four of the top ten selling Contemporary artists in 2025 were women, although that falls to 28% across the top 50. New Zealand shows a similar pattern: women perform better in Contemporary art than in other categories, but only two of the top ten Contemporary artists were female, even though women made up 30% of the top 50. In other words, there’s still room at the top end for New Zealand to catch up with Australia.

Photography may also be emerging as an especially important female-led segment in New Zealand. Marti Friedlander continues to perform strongly at auction, while Fiona Pardington entered 2025 with major institutional momentum after being selected to represent Aotearoa New Zealand at the 2026 Venice Biennale. That kind of institutional recognition does not always translate directly into auction results, but it can strengthen visibility, confidence, and long-term market attention.

Where some of that progress is coming from

In New Zealand, part of the improvement may reflect not only changing collector demand, but also a changing approach from auction houses, galleries and museums. International Art Centre’s dedicated Women in Art sales have helped bring greater visibility to female artists and have contributed to new records for artists including Star Gossage, Pauline Yearbury, Marti Friedlander, Flora Scales, Kushana Bush, and Evelyn Page.

That matters because markets do not shift only through demand; they also shift through curation, supply, and the confidence created when artists are deliberately foregrounded.

There have also been a revival in female focused exhibitions across public galleries, including Auckland Art Gallery’s significant exhibition of women artists with Modern Women: Flight of Time, as well as the Dunedin Public Art Gallery exhibition of Groundbreakers: Grace Joel, Frances Hodgkins and the new art of Ōtepoti, both in 2024.

This is worth emphasising because it suggests that auction representation is not just a passive reflection of the market. It can also be shaped by the way our auction houses, commercial and public museums choose to frame, group, and promote artists. In that sense, 2025 may point not only to stronger demand for women artists, but also to more active market-making around them.

Artists to watch

Beyond the headline records, several women artists continue to show increasing demand in the secondary market.

In Australia, Bronwyn Oliver, Margaret Olley, Criss Canning, Florence Fuller, Inge King, and Carol Jerrems all stand out. Some are benefiting from sustained collector demand, while others appear to be gaining ground through renewed historical attention and record-setting results. Olley set a new auction record in 2025, while Jerrems also saw a major record for her landmark photograph Vale Street.

In New Zealand, artists such as Robyn Kahukiwa, Jenny Doležel, Pauline Yearbury, Star Gossage, Lisa Reihana, Dorothy Kate Richmond, Marti Friedlander, Evelyn Page, Flora Scales, and Fiona Pardington are all worth watching. Some are already well established, while others are benefiting from more consistent auction visibility or a growing market reassessment of their importance.

Conclusion

Overall, 2025 reinforced a familiar pattern. Women artists are gaining visibility, setting new records, and improving their position across much of the middle market. But the structure of both auction markets remains largely unchanged. Progress is real, yet it is still concentrated, uneven, and far from complete.

At the top end especially, underrepresentation remains persistent. The more encouraging story lies below that level: a broader pool of women artists is finding support, sell-through rates are improving, and both institutional and commercial attention appear to be widening. That is not the same thing as parity, but it is how markets begin to change.

Note: Approximately 1% of Australian sales and 3% of New Zealand sales did not have artist gender recorded and have been excluded from this analysis.

Australian Fine Art Auction 2026 Insights

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This week, we look at the top-selling artists by total auction sales value in 2025. These rankings do more than highlight the biggest names. They show where demand is strongest, where momentum is building, and where the market may be starting to shift. For collectors of Australian art, the names on this list are worth watching closely, particularly when new artists appear, as that can signal a change in market attention and point to artists worth following more closely.

Headline prices can make these artists seem unattainable, but the broader auction results reveal more buying opportunities than may first appear. Many of these artists still have prints or works on paper trading at far more accessible levels. The median price for an Arthur Boyd was just $1,750, 16 works by Brett Whiteley sold for under $10,000, and Sidney Nolan had 379 works sell for under $5,000, with the median just over $1,000, helped by the sale of a significant collection of his prints.

Even where the median was higher, entry points still existed: Bessie Davidson, Cressida Campbell, Criss Canning and Del Kathryn Barton each had works selling for around $10,000 or less, as did Howard Arkley, Arthur Streeton and Jeffrey Smart.

Below are some of the more revealing results and observations behind the top 10 rankings for both male and female artists.

Male Artists in 2025

Howard Arkley was the standout performer of 2025, topping the market with $10.6 million in sales and reinforcing his position as Australia’s leading contemporary artist at auction. Contemporary Units sold for $2.5 million at Smith & Singer, setting a new auction record for Arkley as well as the highest Australian auction result of the year. Another three Arkley works sold between $1.8 million and $2.5 million. Arkley’s placement at the top was driven not by volume, but by an extraordinary concentration of value in just four paintings, which together generated almost $9 million.

Arthur Boyd’s result showed both depth and breadth. A collection of prints from Tony and Indra Deigan, who had collaborated with Boyd to produce them, added volume to the market, but it was the major works that drove his ranking. Bride in the Hibiscus Bush sold for $1.78 million at Smith & Singer, the second-highest price achieved for a Boyd work, while a further 20 works sold for more than $100,000. Boyd’s market has also shown consistent growth over the past six years, indicating continued interest from collectors.

John Peter Russell was the clearest example of how scarcity can still produce top-tier results. He was the only artist in the top group with fewer than 10 works sold, yet three significant works each achieved more than $1 million, securing his place among the top sellers. With supply so limited, Russell’s best works tend to command major prices whenever they appear. Though in 2024 three watercolours by him each sold for under $10,000 which presented an interesting buying opportunity.

Sidney Nolan, by contrast, reached the top 10 through volume rather than trophy prices. A significant group of works from his wife’s estate came to market, pushing the total number of Nolan works sold in 2025 to almost 400. Only five sold for more than $100,000, but the sheer quantity of works traded was enough to place him among the year’s top sellers.

Fred Williams and Charles Blackman help illustrate two different reasons an artist can fall back in the rankings. Williams, usually a top-three name, appears to have slipped largely because of supply: aside from some lower-value works, those that came to market sold well. Blackman’s result looks different. Buyer demand appeared softer, with three works estimated above $100,000 failing to sell, including Alice Amongst Flowers, which carried an estimate of $700,000–$900,000.

Overall, the familiar Post-War names still dominate the top male sellers. However, 2025 also hinted at a modest rebalancing, with more Impressionist & Modern artists taking a larger share, particularly when the lens is widened to the top 20.

Female Artists in 2025

Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Grace Cossington Smith were the standout female performers of 2025, and both would have made a combined top 10 ranking of Australian artists overall. At the same time, the results also underline a broader structural reality: women remain under-represented at the top tier of auction sales. That is why I have highlighted the top-selling female artists separately below.

Across the most bankable female artists, several auction records were set. Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Grace Cossington Smith, Margaret Olley, Dorrit Black and Criss Canning each achieved new record prices.

Sell-through rates reinforce that strength in demand. Smith, Canning and Black each recorded perfect sell-through rates, along with Bessie Davidson. In addition, Olley, Cressida Campbell and Bronwyn Oliver each had just one work fail to sell. Taken together, these results point to a market with strong buyer appetite whenever top works by women come to auction.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s major retrospective at Tate Modern opened in 2025, further strengthening the global recognition of her work and likely supporting the sale of Untitled (Awelye) for $1.2 million at Deutscher and Hackett.

Dorrit Black’s sale of Sicilian Mountain was one of the most striking results of the year. It achieved $687,500, far above its high estimate of $180,000, selling at Smith & Singer. The result was made even more significant by the fact that the work was acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia and is included in the Dangerously Modern exhibition currently on at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Cressida Campbell’s absence from the very top of the rankings looks more like a supply story than a demand story. In recent years she has regularly ranked among the top two or three female artists, but the limited number of works coming to market this year clearly affected total sales. Margaret Preston offers a similar example as she is a regular top-10 presence, but without top-tier works appearing, she dropped out of the rankings.

In recent years, Cressida Campbell’s works have placed her among the top two or three female artists, but the lack of supply this year had a noticeable effect on total sales. Margaret Preston is also a regular name in the top 10, but a lack of top-tier works meant she did not appear this year.

Overall, there is strong demand for top-tier works by women, limited mainly by the supply of what comes to market.

Final observations and predictions

One striking pattern is the greater age diversity among female artists, with multiple artists represented across each generation. By contrast, almost all of the male artists in the top group were born within a narrow 20-year window (late 1910s to late 1930s). This is a similar pattern to New Zealand.

Breaking the top 10 by age segment adds another layer to that picture. Women show their strongest representation in the Contemporary category, making up four of the top 10: Bronwyn Oliver, Cressida Campbell, Criss Canning and Del Kathryn Barton. By contrast, women remain much less represented among the top-selling Impressionist & Modern and Post War artists. Supply is clearly part of the explanation, because, as noted above, many of these artists perform strongly when their works do come to auction.

Looking ahead to 2026, there is a global trend of interest shifting away from Contemporary artists and towards Impressionist & Modern and Old Master artists. In a more uncertain market, collectors are gravitating towards artists with finite supply, proven reputations and longer track records at auction. At the same time, softer demand for Contemporary art suggests some buyers believe prices in that segment had run ahead of fundamentals. I expect to see a similar trend in Australia, though much will depend on whether top works by these earlier artists come to market.

Methodology note: All prices include buyer’s premium. Where buyer’s premium was not published, it has been calculated using the auction house’s stated rate.

Australian Fine Art Auction 2026 Insights

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Market Summary
What shaped the auction market in 2025

The Australian fine art auction market delivered a record year with $121m in total sales (+15.3%) across six leading auction houses. Activity also strengthened with 3,572 lots offered (+4.0%) and 2,675 lots sold (+9.5%), lifting the sell-through rate to 75%, showing growth was supported by stronger clearance and volume, not just higher prices.

Sales distribution remained highly top-heavy. Works selling for more than $100k represented just 8.8% of lots sold but generated 73.2% of total value ($88.8m). At the other end, works selling for under $5k accounted for 48.5% of lots sold but contributed only ~2% of sales, reinforcing the market’s long-tail structure. The key change in 2025 was depth with the top price falling from $3.9m to $2.5m, yet total sales increased, consistent with growth being spread across more high-value transactions rather than on a few outlier trophy works.

2025 also marked a step-change year for Howard Arkley, confirming his position as Australia’s leading contemporary artist at auction. His works generated $10.6m in sales, including two $2.5m results (Contemporary Units sold at Smith & Singer and Neapolitan Delight at Deutscher and Hackett) and four of the year’s top ten prices. This is an exceptional concentration of value in a single artist, with results significantly exceeding estimates.

Post War art remained the market’s anchor by total dollars, but Impressionist & Modern and Contemporary gained share. Contemporary’s rise was heavily Arkley led, while Impressionist & Modern’s surge was broader-based with John Peter Russell the headline name, supported by Frederick McCubbin, Arthur Streeton, Grace Cossington Smith, and Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

Women artists remained structurally underrepresented. Works by women accounted for 18.2% of total sales, flat year-on-year and slightly below the five-year average. That said, 2025 delivered meaningful top-end signals with Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled (Awelye) exceeding $1m at Deutscher and Hackett and Grace Cossington Smith’s The Reader (The School Cape) coming in just shy of $1m, also at Deutscher and Hackett. These are both among the strongest results ever achieved by women artists at auction in Australia.

First Nations art strengthened again in 2025. Total sales reached $12.2m (+23% vs 2024), with results led by Kngwarreye, followed by Albert Namatjira and Lin Onus. Concentration was high with Kngwarreye alone representing 38% of sales, yet the market also retained meaningful entry points, with substantial volume continuing to transact at lower price tiers alongside trophy pricing.

Globally, 2025 also improved with Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips delivering $5.42bn in art auction sales, but remained well below the post-pandemic peak. The defining feature was timing: H2 sales of $3.24bn were 48% higher than H1’s $2.18bn, and the rebound was led by top-tier works coming to market. Australia broadly mirrored the global H2 lift, but with a firmer starting point, H1 held up relatively well to prior years, and with growth supported by higher clearance and deeper $100k+ activity rather than dependence on single trophy lot.

2025 rewarded both rare blue-chip artists and a wider pool of high-quality works from a broad base of Australian artists. The key question for 2026 is whether supply can remain strong enough to sustain momentum now that the market has reset to a higher level.

10 Key Takeaways
2025 by the numbers

$121m

Total value of fine art sold across six leading auction houses in 2025, setting a new record for sales.

75%

Sell-through rate rose in 2025, up from 71% in 2024.

$5,250

The median price in 2025, up 5% from $5,000 in 2024. The 1000^th most expensive art work sold for $11,046, up from $8,125.

236

Artworks sold for $100k+ representing just 8.8% of lots sold, but generating 73% of total sales ($88.8m).

16

Number of lots sold for $1m+ in 2025, (up from 14 in 2024). Their share of sales fell to 21% (from 25.0%), pointing to a less “trophy-dependent” year.

$2.5m

Highest price of the year, achieved by Howard Arkley’s Contemporary Units at Smith & Singer in August ($2.0m hammer price).

80/50

The top 50 artists captured 80% of 2025 sales value, while the top 10 captured 47% of sales value.

$42m

Sales attributed to Impressionist & Modern artists, up from $24m in 2024 (up 78% from 2024).

18%

Share of total sales attributable to women artists, unchanged from 2024.

804%

Largest over performance against estimate: Donald Friend’s Vel Festival, Toy Seller, Ceylon sold for $56,250 against an estimate of $5,000 - $7,000 at Smith & Singer.

New Zealand Auction Market 2025 Review

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How did different generations of New Zealand artists perform in 2025? Segmenting the market by birth year reveals interesting structural differences in demand, concentration, and volatility. Some categories remain anchors of stability. Others are narrower or still forming. I’ve loosely followed Artnet’s grouping of categories by birth year.

Postwar (1911–1944)

Postwar artists continued to be the most lucrative and consistent segment of the New Zealand auction market in 2025. The category generated just under $16 million in sales, a modest 2% increase on 2024, and has remained broadly stable over the past three years. This segment includes many of New Zealand’s most bankable artists including Colin McCahon, Don Binney, Ralph Hotere, Tony Fomison, and Gordon Walters, and accounted for seven of the ten most expensive works sold during the year. It also delivered the strongest sell-through performance, averaging around 72% over the past three years.

This consistency reflects depth. Collectors continue to return to recognisable, institutionally validated artists from this mid-century cohort. A number of significant figures sit just outside the strict date range, such as Rita Angus (1908) and Bill Hammond (1947), which only reinforces how structurally strong this broader Postwar segment remains.

Early New Zealand (pre-1911)

By contrast, the Early New Zealand category experienced a sharp decline in 2025. This contraction was driven almost entirely by Charles F. Goldie. While 2024 had been an exceptional year, with Goldie’s works generating nearly $12 million in sales, results in 2025 fell to under $1 million as the market absorbed that unusually strong prior year. Despite this volatility, sell-through rates for the category have remained relatively stable, averaging around 69% over the past three years.

The category’s challenge is concentration. A small number of artists drive the majority of value, with Goldie dominant alongside Gottfried Lindauer and Frances Hodgkins. Without results from these three artists, overall results are materially affected.

Contemporary (1945+)

Sales for Contemporary artists were broadly stable over the same period. In 2025, the category recorded a small uplift, supported by stronger results for artists including Karl Maughan, Shane Cotton, Grahame Sydney, and Brent Wong. However, Contemporary works remained underrepresented at the very top end of the market, with only two works appearing in the top 20 most expensive sales of the year. Sell-through rates for Contemporary art have been consistently lower than Postwar, averaging around 65% over the past three years.

Contemporary remains the most volatile segment, with total sales still less than half the 2021 pandemic spike. That is not necessarily a weakness. This is a market still forming. As new leaders emerge and price ceilings are tested, today’s contemporary artists may become tomorrow’s blue-chip anchors. For now, it remains the most dynamic and arguably the most interesting segment to watch.

Taken together, the data shows a market behaving differently across generations. Stability sits in the mid-century names, concentration defines the earliest works, and contemporary remains more fluid. Those distinctions help explain many of the year’s headline results.

Note: Approximately 3% of sales did not have an artist birth date recorded and have been excluded from this analysis.

New Zealand Auction Market 2025 Review

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Auction estimates are intended as pricing guides, but in some cases competitive bidding can push results well beyond expectations. The works listed below are the ten lots that exceeded their high estimates by the largest margins in 2025.

At the top of the list was Michael Smither’s Pā Site with Mount Taranaki, which sold at Webb’s for $27,485 against a high estimate of $6,000, a result more than four times expectations. While Mt Taranaki is a recurring motif in Smither’s work, this remains a striking outcome for a painting measuring just 15 × 15 cm, underscoring the strength of demand for the artist regardless of scale.

Raewyn Turner’s A Thousand Acres also significantly outperformed expectations, achieving $97,990 at Webb’s against a high estimate of $22,000. The work’s cultural significance as the cover image for Frenzy (1979) by Split Enz likely attracted interest beyond the traditional art-collecting audience, contributing to the competitive result.

Several other results reinforce the depth of demand below the very top end of the market. Jenny Dolezel’s The Art of Living sold at International Art Centre for more than three times its high estimate, confirming that despite reduced supply in 2025, appetite for her work remains strong following a highly active period in 2023 and 2024.

It is worth noting that percentage-based overperformance tends to favour lower-priced works. Achieving a threefold increase on a $10,000 estimate is materially easier than doing so on a six-figure painting. Even so, two of the most expensive works of 2025 achieved results close to double their high estimates. Jeffrey Harris’ Jillian and Brothers sold for $194,960 against a high estimate of $95,000 at Art & Object, while Peter Stichbury’s Savannah realised $254,678 against a high estimate of $130,000 at International Art Centre. Both sales set new auction records for these artists.

Were these prices justified?

Every bidder should have a view on what a work is worth before the auction begins. Not what it might reach in the heat of competition, but what it is worth to them based on context such as past prices, scale, rarity, quality, and broader market context. That view helps define where you should stop.

Of course, auctions are not purely rational environments. Sometimes something more primal takes over, the desire to win, to secure the work at any cost. That instinct is part of collecting. There is nothing wrong with giving in to it. But if you are going to override your own valuation, do so consciously and with context, rather than impulsively and without it.

From that perspective, $27,485 for a 15 × 15 cm Michael Smither feels ambitious. Similarly, $14,414 for a Pat Hanly print appears strong when two examples from the same edition achieved approximately $3,400 just a year earlier.

By contrast, the Robyn Kahukiwa work was widely described as exceptional and sometimes quality justifies deviation from precedent. Meanwhile, the near-doubling of high estimates for Jeffrey Harris and Peter Stichbury may represent something more structural: a potential re-rating of where these two artists rank amongst New Zealand’s best.

These results may mark a genuine shift in what the market is willing to pay for certain artists. Or they may prove to be outliers. Only time will tell which proves true.

New Zealand Art Auction Market 2025 Insights

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Market Summary
What shaped the auction market in 2025

New Zealand’s art auction market cooled in 2025 compared with the exceptional highs of 2021–2022 and the Goldie-driven spike of 2024. Total auction sales fell to approximately $32.6 million, a decline of around 24% year-on-year. This pullback was driven primarily by the absence of ultra-high-value works rather than a broad-based fall in demand. Even so, 2025 remains among the five strongest years in New Zealand’s auction history, indicating a market that has softened rather than weakened structurally.

The highest price achieved in 2025 was $660,660 for Don Binney’s Fatbird II at International Art Centre. By contrast, 2024 was defined by the record-breaking $3.75 million sale of Charles F. Goldie’s Thoughts of a Tohunga, the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction in New Zealand. No artwork reached the million-dollar mark in 2025, the first time in five years, and sales above $500,000 were rare.

Despite weaker headline numbers, the underlying market showed resilience. Sell-through rates improved to ~66%, and pricing across the middle of the market remained relatively stable. The contraction was concentrated at the very top, while activity below six figures remained active and competitive, particularly in the second half of the year.

These dynamics broadly echoed patterns seen internationally, where caution at the top end was offset by selective confidence in well-priced, high-quality works later in the year. While the New Zealand market operates at a very different scale, similar behaviour was evident across comparable price brackets.

Momentum within New Zealand shifted toward postwar and contemporary artists. Postwar works generated nearly $16 million in sales and accounted for seven of the ten highest-priced works of the year. Sales by contemporary artists increased despite the overall market contraction, lifting their share of total sales value to roughly one-third of the market. By contrast, early New Zealand artists experienced a sharp pullback following the exceptional Goldie-led results of 2024, compounded by several significant works failing to sell in 2025.

Women artists continued to gain ground. Their share of total sales value rose to 19%, the highest level across the five years analysed. Works by female artists recorded stronger sell-through rates across much of the market. Rita Angus’s Before the Demolition, sold at Art & Object for $621,435, became the second-highest auction price ever achieved by a female artist in New Zealand, reinforcing growing recognition of her work at the top end. This also reflects Angus’ high quality works being tightly held by institutions and leading collectors.

Overall, 2025 reflects a period of adjustment shaped by broader economic uncertainty, particularly in the first half of the year. Fewer trophy works came to market, buyers were more selective at the top end, yet the auction market remained historically strong, liquid across the middle tiers, and increasingly balanced as it enters 2026.

10 Key Takeaways
2025 by the numbers

$32.6m

Total value of fine art sold at NZ auction in 2025, down 24% from 2024.

80%

Increase in sales in the second half of 2025 ($21.0m) compared with the first half ($11.7m). This followed a similar trend to global markets, where H2 sales were also significantly up.

66%

Sell-through rate in 2025, up slightly from 64% in 2024.

$660,660

Highest price of the year (including buyer’s premium), achieved by Don Binney’s Fatbird II at International Art Centre in July (hammer price $550,000).

3

Only three artworks sold above $500,000 (down from 12 in 2024), representing an 86% decline in sales value at that level. For the first time in five years, no artwork reached the million-dollar mark. By contrast, 52 works sold for more than $100,000, broadly unchanged from 2024.

-$11m

Largest single-artist decline: Charles F. Goldie sales fell 94% year-on-year, following the exceptional sale of Neil Graham’s collection in 2024 and reverting to below long-term average levels.

$6,320

Average realised price per work, down 13% from 2024, reflecting fewer top-tier sales.

19%

Share of total sales value attributable to women artists, continuing an upward trend from 13% in 2021. Though only 11 women featured among the top 50 selling artists in 2025 (down from 13 in 2024).

$54,833

Price of the 100th most expensive artwork in 2025, about 40% lower than 2021.

358%

Largest over-performance against estimate: Michael Smither’s Pā Site with Mount Taranaki at Webb’s.

There are plenty of thoughtful voices writing about technique, theory, and art history. What interests me more is how the art market behaves in practice: what prices are being paid, what collectors are buying, and what the data tells us about artists, categories, and trends.

What follows is a more refined version of the vision for this newsletter and the thinking behind its new name.

For Collectors

The Underbidder is written for collectors, particularly those early in their collecting journey, who want clearer, more practical insight into the market. Each edition aims to make the art market more accessible by explaining artists and their work in plain language, exploring price points and momentum, sharing market-level trends drawn from auction data, and offering buying ideas across subject, style, and period.

For the Industry

Alongside this, the newsletter provides independent, data-driven analysis of the secondary market, combining results across leading auction houses. The goal is to offer an unbiased view of how the market is evolving that is useful to collectors and industry participants alike. While many publications cover the global art market, there remains relatively limited analysis focused specifically on New Zealand and Australia.

Why The Underbidder

The name change comes from the idea of the underbidder: the collector who understands value, knows when enthusiasm is justified, and knows when to stop bidding. In a market that can often feel opaque or emotional, The Underbidder is about clearly understanding the value of art before the hammer falls.

You can always find this Substack by navigating to www.theunderbidder.net wherever you browse the internet.

Next week, I’ll be publishing a comprehensive review of the New Zealand art auction market in 2025. If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to subscribe so you don’t miss it.

Subscribe now

The criticisms raised by The Listener feel fair to me. A national museum like Te Papa should be showing the 20 - 30 best New Zealand artworks prominently and permanently. On my last visit, it felt like only a very small slice of the collection was actually on display. The Listener suggests one problem is indecision about what should be shown. If that’s the case, then a clearer curatorial position is needed. What follows is a starting point.

Much of Te Papa’s collection can already be seen online, even if only a fraction has been fully digitised. Working within that constraint, I’ve selected 14 works by 14 different artists that should be on display the next time I visit. Te Papa already owns every one of them. They are not lost, disputed, or unavailable. They are simply waiting to be brought out of storage.

Rita Angus

Rutu (1951)

Rutu is a landmark work in Rita Angus’ career, expressing her hope for a calmer, fairer world by bringing different cultures together in a single imagined figure. If I had my way, it would be on permanent display, afforded something closer to the reverence given to the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.

Colin McCahon

Scared (1976)

Colin McCahon believed art should say something important, even if it made people uncomfortable. In Scared, the stark words “I am scared / I STAND UP” turn private doubt into a call for courage and responsibility. If art history is being dropped from high schools, perhaps the answer is not less exposure to art, but more, starting with a postcard-sized version of this work in the hands of every Year 9 (Form 3) student, supported by the original on permanent display at Te Papa.

Don Binney

Puketōtara, twice shy (1976)

Don Binney is best known for bold paintings of birds and landscapes that helped shape ideas of New Zealand identity in the 1960s and 70s. Puketōtara, twice shy sits at a turning point in his career, using the bird in flight to explore freedom, place, and his uneasy fit with a changing art world.

Robin White

Glenda at Tahakopa (1978)

In Glenda at Tahakopa, Robin White places her friend in front of a small rural railway station, turning an ordinary building and a familiar face into a clear statement about place, belief, and small-town New Zealand. Te Papa bought this work at auction in 2022 for around $400,000, but I’m not sure it’s ever been on display. I’m supportive of public money buying artwork, but only if it’s publicly displayed.

Gordon Walters

Genealogy III (1971)

Gordon Walters was one of the first New Zealand artists to fully commit to abstraction. In Genealogy III, he turns the koru into a stark black-and-white pattern, showing how Māori forms could be reworked within a modern abstract language. It’s also available as a print that frequently comes up at auction.

Tony Fomison

Te Puhi o te Tai Haruru (1984-85)

In Te Puhi o te Tai Haruru, Tony Fomison imagines the Taranaki coast as a place watched over by ancestors. The landscape becomes a reminder that memory, knowledge, and responsibility are passed down through generations.

Michael Smither

Railway Station bridge and old step (1967)

I’m a big fan of Michael Smither’s everyday scenes and nearly chose Toys’ Tea Party. Instead, I went with Railway Station bridge and old step because it’s a great example of his distinctive way of painting rocks: solid, carefully observed, and with a real sense of presence.

Michael Parekowhai

He Kōrero Pūrākau mo Te Awanui o Te Motu (2011)

One of Michael Parekowhai’s pianos ranks amongst the most expensive works sold at auction in New Zealand, but this one is in public hands. In He Kōrero Pūrākau mo Te Awanui o Te Motu, he turns a grand piano into both sculpture and instrument, flipping the usual story so New Zealand, not Europe, becomes the starting point. It also feels like the perfect excuse to let a talented young New Zealand pianist actually play it.

Gretchen Albrecht

Indian Summer (1974)

Gretchen Albrecht is best known for her hemisphere paintings, but I’m especially drawn to her mid-1970s rectangular works. In Indian Summer, she pours and stains paint to suggest sky and sea at sunset, turning a familiar New Zealand scene into something calm and immersive.

Louise Henderson

Les deux amies (The two friends) (1953)

Louise Henderson brought European modern ideas back to New Zealand at a time when the local art scene was very conservative. In Les deux amies, she uses cubist forms to show two women as strong, intimate equals, making it a quietly radical image for 1950s New Zealand.

Seraphine Pick

Love School (1999)

Seraphine Pick is one of New Zealand’s leading contemporary paintings, known for dense, dreamlike paintings that feel overloaded, uneasy, and emotionally charged.
In Love School, she brings together fragments from memory, pop culture, and art history to create a private scene that feels more like a mental state than a narrative.

Philip Clairmont

The scarred couch: the Auckland experience (1978)

Philip Clairmont painted ordinary interiors in a raw, confrontational way, using intense colour and distortion. In The Scarred Couch, a damaged sofa fills the canvas, acting as a blunt stand-in for the artist’s frustration and mental state in 1970s Auckland.

Frances Hodgkins

Double Portrait No. 2 (Katharine and Anthony West) (1937)

Frances Hodgkins began with Impressionist painting but gradually moved toward a looser, more abstract style. Painted late in her career, Double Portrait No. 2 keeps the sitters recognisable while focusing less on likeness and more on mood and structure.

Bill Hammond

Traffic Cop Bay (2003)

In Traffic Cop Bay, Bill Hammond’s bird-headed figures move through a strange, dreamlike landscape that hints at environmental loss and human impact. To Te Papa’s credit, this work was on display when I visited in 2021. Please keep it there. There’s always something new to notice in this artwork.

There are many more important works hidden away in Te Papa’s storage. I’d encourage anyone to browse the collection online and see what’s waiting in the wings. What would you want to see brought out and put on the walls?

For collectors of New Zealand art, these are artists worth watching closely. They continue to attract the strongest demand at auction. Although the top results can make these artists appear unattainable, many of them have prints or works on paper that trade at much lower price points. Notably, the median price for a Michael Smither or a Louise Henderson work was just over $1,000, Robyn Kahukiwa and Seraphine Pick both had median prices under $5,000, and the median prices for Don Binney, Gordon Walters, and Robin White were under $10,000 while Bill Hammond was just over.

Below are some of the more interesting results and observations behind the top 10 rankings for both male and female artists.

Male Artists in 2025

The top selling artist of 2025 was Don Binney. His position was driven by the year’s highest-priced work, Fatbird II ($661k at International Art Centre), alongside several other major sales including Summer Fernbird III ($445k at Art & Object), Two Aspects of Tokatoa ($390k at Webb’s), and Pipiwharauroa – Shining Cuckoo ($364k at International Art Centre).

A new auction record was set for Ralph Hotere with I can hear you making small holes in the silence ($402k at Art & Object). That result also helped propel him to second place by total sales for the year.

Michael Smither was the most prolific seller by number of lots. This reflects his extensive body of screenprints, which trade at relatively accessible price points. At the same time, he ranked fifth overall by value, supported by strong results for works including Untitled, Rock Pools ($267k at International Art Centre) and Back Beach ($215k at Webb’s).

Karl Maughan is the youngest artist in this top 10. Demand for his garden landscapes remains strong, with a new auction record set by Landscape with Pool ($191k at Art & Object). Another work, Ashhurst, achieved his second-highest price ($163k also at Art & Object).

Bill Hammond is best known for his paintings, but before he fully embarked on his art career, he worked as a toy maker. These works have usually attracted limited bidding. That changed in 2025, when Untitled (Bird Man) sold for $10k at Webb’s, four times its $2,500 high estimate. It may mark the early stages of renewed interest in this lesser-known part of Hammond’s practice.

Amongst his paintings, Cornwall Road Cave achieved the top price ($358k at Webb’s) for Hammond’s work in 2025 placing it within the top 10 most expensive paintings in 2025.

One notable omission from the top 10 is Charles F Goldie. Despite recording the third-highest individual sale of the year, Ho Koora Te Cigaretti, Portrait of Kapi Kapi ($505k at International Art Centre), he finished in 11th place overall. This appears to be the first time in at least a decade that Goldie has not featured in the top 10. Given that his works achieved nearly $12m at auction in 2024, this may reflect a natural correction following an exceptional year, compounded by a softer first half in which fewer trophy works were sold.

Female Artists in 2025

No women featured in the overall top 10 by total sales in 2025. Fiona Pardington and Rita Angus came closest, finishing 12th and 13th respectively. For that reason, I’ve highlighted the top selling female artists separately below.

Fiona Pardington continues to attract strong demand for her huia photographs. Interest may strengthen further following her representation of New Zealand at the Venice Biennale this year. Her top result, Lovers, Timaru, South Canterbury Museum, sold for $65k at Webb’s, significantly exceeding its $35k high estimate.

The second-highest female sale of 2025 was Rita Angus’s Before the Demolition ($621k at Art & Object). Major oil works by Angus are rare at auction, and this single sale was sufficient to propel her to near the top of the annual rankings.

Louise Henderson set a new auction record with Setting Sun Indian Ocean ($143k at Webb’s). This was the second highest price achieved by female artists in 2025.

Robyn Kahukiwa, who passed away in April, recorded her most significant sale in March with Girl in a Bush Shirt ($53k at Webb’s), the second-highest price for her work. Several strong results later in the year consolidated her position among the top female artists of 2025.

A new record was also set for Jude Rae with SI 203 ($54k at Webb’s). Another work, SL 366, sold for $43k at Art & Object, well above its $26k high estimate.

Just outside the top 10 sits Raewyn Turner. Her work A Thousand Acres was the third-highest selling work by a woman in 2025, selling at Webb’s for $98k against a $22k high estimate. Turner rarely appears at auction and does not typically achieve such prices, but this work holds particular cultural significance as the cover art for Frenzy (1979) by Split Enz. It is easy to imagine multiple passionate music collectors competing for this unique piece of New Zealand cultural history.

Final observations and predictions

One striking pattern is the greater age diversity among female artists with multiple artists being represented across each generation. By contrast, almost all male artists in the top group were born within a narrow 30-year window (1918–1948).

I looked at the top 10 results by age segments and had expected stronger gender diversity among contemporary artists1, but the data suggests otherwise. Instead, the most pronounced diversity appears among artists born in 1910 or earlier, including Rita Angus, Louise Henderson, Frances Hodgkins, and Lois White featuring strongly.

Looking ahead to 2026, I expect many of the male names in the current top 10 are likely to reappear. Charles F Goldie also seems a strong candidate to return. By contrast, there is often greater fluctuation among the top female artists. Fiona Pardington, Gretchen Albrecht, and Robin White are perennial favourites and appear well placed to feature again. For others, outcomes will likely depend more on opportunity, specifically, whether major or exceptional works are offered at auction.

Methodology note: All prices include buyer’s premium. Where buyer’s premium was not published, it has been calculated using the auction house’s stated rate. One exception is Mrkusich’s Achromatic with Red, which is included at hammer price.

My top picks are Modern Art and Art Society, where auctions produce tension, negotiation, and changing values that keep every round engaging, while the rules are easy enough to grasp and quick to teach.

Canvas is well suited to players looking for a shorter, less competitive game that rewards creativity, while Hues and Cues is a great lighter option for something quick and social.

All scores are out of 10 and come from BoardGameGeek, generally considered the most authoritative board-game database.

Modern Art

BGG Score: 7.5 | Released: 1992 | Playing Time: 45 min
A classic auction game where players both sell and bid on artworks, using a variety of auction formats that create constant interaction and shifting incentives. It remains one of the best demonstrations of how prices in the art world are driven as much by timing and confidence as by taste.

The Gallerist

BGG Score: 8.0 | Released: 2015 | Playing Time: 60-150 min
Although the highest scoring game in this list, it’s not my top recommendation. It’s a deep, highly strategic game that puts players in the role of elite gallery owners juggling artists, collectors, exhibitions, and international prestige. It ranks amongst the top 100 board games of all time. Hugely rewarding for experienced gamers, but its complexity and length mean it’s better suited to dedicated board-game nights than casual play.

Art Society

BGG Score: 7.5 | Released: 2023 | Playing Time: 30-60 min
A light, competitive game about building a fashionable collection through bidding and carefully arranging artworks on your gallery wall. It’s fast and highly interactive, capturing shifting tastes, prestige, and the subtle tension between aesthetics and strategy.

Canvas

BGG Score: 7.2 | Released: 2021 | Playing Time: 30 min
Players layer transparent cards to create unique artworks, scoring points based on artistic goals and visual combinations. It’s visually beautiful, easy to learn, and quietly satisfying, making it a great gateway game for people who don’t usually play board games.

Fresco

BGG Score: 7.2 | Released: 2010 | Playing Time: 60 min
Set during a Renaissance cathedral restoration, players manage apprentices, mix pigments, and restore a fading ceiling fresco. Beneath the charming theme is a solid Euro-style game about planning, efficiency, and managing limited resources. It’s not as heavy going as The Gallerist, but it’s still more complicated than something like Settlers of Catan.

Kanagawa

BGG Score: 7.0 | Released: 2016 | Playing Time: 45 min
Inspired by Japanese woodblock printing, players assemble panoramic landscapes to gain mastery under the great artist Hokusai. The game is calm, elegant, and thoughtful, with an art style that feels integral rather than decorative.

Art Decko

BGG Score: 6.9 | Released: 2019 | Playing Time: 45-60 min
A deck-building game centred on art collecting, where buying and exhibiting works directly reshapes the value of each genre across the table. Strategic tension comes from deciding when to grow your deck, when to cash in through exhibitions, and how to stay ahead of shifting market values.

Hue and Cues

BGG Score: 6.5 | Released: 2020 | Playing Time: 30 min
A party game about giving one or two word clues to get others to guess a specific colour on a large grid. It’s quick, inclusive, and surprisingly revealing about how differently people perceive and describe colour.

Pastiche

BGG Score: 6.8 | Released: 2011 | Playing Time: 45-60 min
Players recreate famous masterpieces by collecting colours, brushes, and artistic styles through a shared market. The game leans more educational than competitive, but it’s engaging for players who enjoy art history references.

Classic Art

BGG Score: 6.6 | Released: 1996 | Playing Time: 30-60 min
An older auction-focused game that revolves around buying and selling famous artworks across different movements. It feels dated in places, but offers a straightforward look at how collecting strategies can rise and fall with shifting tastes.

Vernissage

BGG Score: 6.3 | Released: 1993 | Playing Time: 60 min
Set at an exhibition opening, players mingle with critics, collectors, and artists to gain influence and prestige. It’s mechanically dense and very much a product of its era, but thematically one of the most charmingly specific art-world simulations.

Masterpiece

BGG Score: 5.8 | Released: 1970 | Playing Time: 60 min
A vintage game of hidden information and bluffing, where players buy and sell artworks without knowing their true values. More nostalgic than strategic by modern standards, but still interesting as an early attempt to gamify art collecting.

I’ve also (perhaps controversially) included a couple of Annunciation works. There are far more Annunciations than Nativity scenes in art history, and without that moment, there is no birth of Jesus nine months later.

Enjoy, and thank you for reading. I look forward to sharing more auction insights in 2026.

Grace Cossington Smith (1892-1984) Christmas Tree 1953 sold at Menzies in 2014 for $122,727 AUD

Pro Hart (1928 - 2006) Christmas Day in a Mining Town 1974 sold at Deutscher and Hackett in 2010 for $28,800 AUD

Ginger Riley Munduwalawala (c.1936 - 2002) Christmas at Old Roper River Mission, 1995 - 96 sold at Deutscher and Hackett in 2024 for $245,455 AUD

Jacqueline Fahey (b. 1929) Christmas Day sold at International Art Centre in 2021 for $16,000 + BP NZD

Michael Stevenson Christmas Trees: Trinity Hall sold at Art & Object in 2007 for $9,125 NZD

A. Lois White (1903 - 1984) Nativity - Study for Birth of Christ sold at International Art Centre in 2024 for $6,500 +BP NZD

Sidney Nolan (1917 - 1992) Annunciation, 1951 sold at Smith & Singer in 2022

Garry Shead (b. 1942) Annunciation, 2000 sold at Deutscher and Hackett in 2020 for $319,091 AUD

Over the past decade, Australian female artists have built a market defined by breadth and depth. Unlike the men’s market, where Brett Whiteley’s dominance reshapes the distribution, the female market is led by a cluster of artists rather than a single overpowering figure.

I reviewed the top 20 artworks from each year from 2015 to 2024. 200 artworks in total. Across the decade, 34 female artists appear at least once.

Four broad groups shape this landscape:

1. Pioneering modernists, whose early modern works established new approaches to colour and form with enduring demand at the top end.

2. Post-war and late-20th-century artists, who broaden the middle of the market.

3. Contemporary voices, who have risen into the top tier while competing against a deep field of established names.

4. Aboriginal artists, a category dominated by Emily Kame Kngwarreye but still central to the Australian auction market.

Rather than being driven by a single artist, period, or style, results are spread across multiple generations. Within that broader mix, however, five artists in particular stand out as consistently shaping the female auction market over the past decade.

The Core Five

At the centre of the market are five artists who define the shape of the last ten years:

• Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996) leads with 29 appearances in the top 200 and $12.2m in total auction sales over the 10 years and has the highest volume of works at auction. Her paintings translate ancestral knowledge and desert ecologies into expansive, gestural compositions that sit comfortably alongside Western abstraction while remaining grounded in Aboriginal cultural tradition.

• Cressida Campbell (b. 1960) is close behind with 26 appearances and $9.6m in sales. Her single-edition woodblock works, rooted in interiors and still life, combine technical discipline with scarcity, supporting a sustained presence at the top end of the market.

• Rosalie Gascoigne (1917-1999) has 23 appearances and $8.5m in sales, averaging about $170k per work. Her assemblages use weathered found materials, from road signs to soft-drink crates, to create carefully structured works that evoke landscape through colour, rhythm, and texture.

• Del Kathryn Barton (b. 1972) (22 appearances and $7.6m in sales) combines dense mark-making with figurative imagery drawn from nature, psychology, and mythology, producing highly worked paintings that have consistently placed her among the top performers at auction.

• Bronwyn Oliver (1959-2006), with fewer works (15 appearances) but higher value, has achieved $6.7m and one of the highest averages ($269k) of all. Her sculptures combine organic form with rigorous structure, using hand-worked metal to create complex surfaces with limited supply driving consistently high prices at auction.

Together, these five account for the majority of the female market, but importantly, none overshadows the rest.

These Core Five and many of the other top artists fall into the following four groups:

Pioneering Australian Modernists

A second tier of early modern names, born in the 1800s, show the lasting value of pioneering Australian women:

• Grace Cossington Smith (1892-1984) has achieved $5.0m in sales across 12 appearances in the top 200. An early pioneer of Australian modernism, she drew on post-impressionist ideas to transform domestic interiors and Sydney city life into vibrant, light-filled compositions.

• Margaret Preston (1875-1963) has recorded $6.7m in sales with 11 appearances, underpinned by strong demand for both paintings and prints. Her bold still lifes and woodcuts of native flora helped define a distinctly Australian approach to modern art.

• Ethel Carrick (1872-1952) has $5.1m in sales and 8 appearances in the top 200. Her bright, post-impressionist paintings of European street scenes, markets, and floral subjects are defined by bold colour, lively brushwork, and a strong sense of light and movement.

• Bessie Davidson (1879-1965) has appeared 6 times in the top 200 from just 24 sales that generated $2.8m in sales, averaging $117k per work. Her refined interiors and portraits explore domestic life through rich colour and expressive, painterly surfaces shaped by her long Paris career.

• Clarice Becket (1887-1935) only appears twice in the top 200 but has $5.1m in total sales and average $67k per work, putting her on par with the other artists above. Her understated paintings of beaches, streets, and twilight scenes distil light and weather into calm, contemplative compositions.

Post-War Australian Modernists

The post-war generation presents a compelling bridge between the pioneering modernists and the contemporary names. Aside from Rosalie Gascoigne (already mentioned above), they do not dominate the rankings, but they add breadth and continuity across the periods:

• Margaret Olley (1923–2011) is best known for her vibrant still lifes and interiors, transforming the everyday objects of her home and studio into richly layered, intimate compositions.

• Yvonne Audette (b. 1930) is known for abstract paintings built from layered marks and calligraphic lines, using restrained colour and surface texture to create a strong sense of structure and rhythm, and continues to gain momentum at auction.

• Inge King (1915–2016) created abstract steel sculptures exploring organic and planetary forms, often realised at a monumental scale in public spaces. Her major works are rare and priced accordingly.

Rather than forming a single stylistic school, these artists span different practices and materials, providing continuity between the pioneering modernists and today’s contemporary market.

Contemporary Drivers

What stands apart the female market is the strength of its post-1945 cohort. Unlike the male market, where contemporary names appear but rarely dominate, the female side is led by artists whose influence remains active today.

Beyond the key figures already mentioned (Del Kathryn Barton, Cressida Campbell, Bronwyn Oliver), artists such as Criss Canning, Tracey Moffatt, and Carol Jerrems contribute to the contemporary depth of the market. Canning, in particular, has shown strong momentum over the past five years, with rising prices and increasing momentum.

This contemporary weight makes the market feel more future-facing than its male counterpart.

Aboriginal Presence

Emily Kame Kngwarreye is such a significant figure in Australian art that she leads the female market by volume, total sales, and record prices. Given the prominence of Aboriginal art in the Australian auction market more broadly, I expected to see a wider group of female Aboriginal artists appearing regularly in the annual top-20 results. In practice, however, representation at this very top end remains narrow.

The next most visible names over the decade are:

• Sally Gabori is the next most significant name Aboriginal name, but with $1.8m in sales and averaging only $31k per work, she lacks the impact of the other artists listed above, but momentum in prices for her works continues to build.

• Naata Nungurrayi and Maggie Watson Napangardi are two other artists worth knowing, each had 2 works in the top 200, but that was near the start of the 10 years analysed, while the volume of works coming to auction is limited and their sales sit below $1m.

Kngwarreye’s dominance therefore reflects a concentration of top-tier auction results, rather than a lack of significance among other female Aboriginal artists. At the very highest price levels tracked here, her market position is exceptional both within Aboriginal art and across the Australian auction market as a whole.

Price Trends

Finally, a brief look at prices. The chart below plots the prices of the top 20 female artworks each year, highlighting how both the ceiling and the floor have evolved over time.

Some key observations:

• The entire price range has shifted upward. From 2020 onward, the whole top-20 cluster sits materially higher than in the mid-2010s.

• The price floor has risen meaningfully. Works ranked 15–20 now achieve prices that would have sat mid-table earlier in the decade.

• The women’s results show a tighter price band. Compared with the men’s market, prices cluster more closely, with fewer extreme highs pulling the distribution apart.

• A price gap remains at the very top. Even with increased focus on women artists, male top-20 works consistently exceed $500k and are edging beyond $800k, while most female top-20 works still transact below $500k

Big Picture

The Australian female auction market is led by a group of artists rather than a single dominant figure. The “Core Five” (Kngwarreye, Campbell, Gascoigne, Barton, Oliver) sit at the centre of the market, but no one artist overwhelms the rest. Alongside other key figures, they fall into four broad groups discussed above:

• Pioneering modernists, who underpin long-term cultural value

• Post-war modernists, who broaden the middle of the market

• Contemporary drivers, who shape its forward momentum

• Aboriginal presence, led overwhelmingly by Kngwarreye

Auction results on the female side are spread across a wider group of artists, supported by ongoing production from living artists, continued institutional attention, and limited supply in markets such as Oliver’s. Together, these factors help explain the consistency seen at the top end over the past decade.

Methodology

As usual, I’ve taken auction results from Smith & Singer, Deutscher and Hackett, Menzies, Bonhams, and Leonard Joel. I’ve also included the two results we previously covered for Emily Kame Kngwarreye from Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art) that featured in our top 10 recently.

The full list of artists and appearance from the top 200 results:

• Core Five: Emily Kame Kngwarreye (29); Cressida Campbell (26); Rosalie Gascoigne (23); Del Kathryn Barton (22); and Bronwyn Oliver (15)

• Historic Anchors: Margaret Preston (11); Grace Cossington Smith (11); Margaret Olley (10); Ethel Carrick (9); Bessie Davidson (5); and Isobel Rae (4)

• Two or Three Appearances: Yvonne Audette (3); Hilda Rix Nicholas (3); Naata Nungurrayi (3); Inge King (3); Florence Fuller (2); Maggie Watson Napangardi (2); Clarice Beckett (2); and Constance Stokes (2)

• One Appearance: Sally Gabori; Ethel Spowers; Ningura Napurrula; Judy Watson Napangardi; Tracey Moffatt; Kathleen Petyarre; Carol Jerrems; Makinti Napanangka; Nora Heysen; Criss Canning; Rosemary Madigan; Emma Minnie Boyd; Dorrit Black; Joy Hester; and Margel Hinder

The women’s rankings show a long tail of artists with one or two appearances, contributing to greater diversity at the top end. Partly because of this, I’ve also taken into consideration the total amount of sales over this time period to ensure proper representation by those women who have just one or two appearances in the top 20 but play a significant contribution to the auction market.

Over the past ten years, the Australian auction market has been led by Brett Whiteley. He appears more often, sells for higher prices, and has achieved greater total sales than anyone else.

In addition, in the past few weeks of analysing the market, several other names keep reappearing. Fred Williams and Sidney Nolan deliver on amount of sales, while John Peter Russell, Arthur Streeton, and Russell Drysdale are responsible for some of the decade’s highest prices.

This week, we’re rounding out that picture with a look at the top male Australian artists. These are the names that consistently move the market. It’s a group dominated by mid-century and earlier painters, so expect a recurring mix of outback horizons, scrubland palettes, and atmospheric light.

Methodology

I reviewed the top 20 artworks from each year from 2015 to 2024 — 200 artworks in total. Together they generated $239m in sales, averaging just under $1.2m per work.

Across the decade, 25 artists appear at least once:

• Market leaders: Brett Whiteley (37); Fred Williams (25); Jeffrey Smart (23); John Brack (18); Sidney Nolan (14); Arthur Streeton (14)

• Established core: Howard Arkley (9); Charles Blackman (8); Arthur Boyd (7); John Peter Russell (5); Frederick McCubbin (5); Lin Onus (4); Ian Fairweather (4); Eugene Von Guérard (4); Russell Drysdale (4)

• Two or three appearances: Albert Tucker (3); Tom Roberts (3); William Dobell (3); John Olsen (2); Nicolas-Martin Petit (2); Joel Elenberg (2)

• One appearance: Hans Heysen; Bertram Mackennal; Conrad Martens; Emanuel Phillips Fox

The Market Leaders

The core of Australia’s top-performing male artists cluster into a 20-year birth window, from Sidney Nolan (1917) to Brett Whiteley (1939). Collectors show a strong bias toward modernist, mid-20th-century works, especially of the Australian outback.

• Brett Whiteley is dominant with 37 appearances, $55.9m in sales, and a huge $1.51m average for those works. No one comes close in frequency or value. He brought a loose, expressive energy to landscapes, interiors, and figures, making his work instantly identifiable.

• Fred Williams is the clear runner-up with 25 appearances, $32.3m in sales, and steady demand across the decade. His landscapes reduce the bush to patterns and textures, creating a distinctly modern vision of Australia.

• Jeffrey Smart (23 appearances; $20.1m) and John Brack (18 appearances; $16.7m) form a consistent mid-century duo, born only a year apart. Although they average under $1m per work, their distinct visions of Australian life continue to resonate with collectors.

• Sidney Nolan ($17.3m) and Arthur Streeton ($17.6m) average over $1.2m per work, placing them among the most valuable names despite fewer appearances than Smart and Brack. Each helped shape Australia’s visual identity through iconic depictions of the outback. Streeton is the one artist amongst the market leaders who is outside that 1910s-1930s birth window.

Big Hitters & Rising Stars

I initially looked for artists who appeared more often in 2020 – 2024 than in 2015 – 2019, hoping to find genuine rising stars. But those who did increase mostly reflect scarcity, not momentum.

Instead, what stands out is a group of Big Hitters who appear rarely in the top 20 but land among the most expensive works in the country:

• John Peter Russell: 5 works and the highest average at $2.1m, reflecting his place at the centre of the Impressionist world in Paris.

• Russell Drysdale: Only 4 works, but averaging over $1.8m each. Demand is strong, but supply of his major works is limited.

• Eugene Von Guérard: one of the earliest names on the list (born in 1811). His 4 works that have made the list averaged over $1.6m each.

If anyone qualifies as Rising Stars, it’s Jeffrey Smart and Arthur Streeton, both of whom increased their presence by around 1.6x - 1.8x in the second half of the ten year period. But they are already blue-chip names rather than the emerging or mid-career artists I was hoping to see break through.

Contemporary Gap

With the exception of Howard Arkley, there are very few contemporary male artists consistently making it into the top 20. Of those artists born after 1945, Arkley is joined by Lin Onus, and Joel Elenberg on this list. I would have expected to see an upward trend for these relatively young artists, but, surprisingly, they showed no increase in the number of appearances in 2020-2024 compared to 2015-2019. And there were no other breakout contemporary names.

Other contemporary artists who do regularly reach six-figure results include Tim Storrier, John Kelly, Ben Quilty, and Rick Amor, but none have yet pushed into the top 20 for sales.

How this evolves will be worth watching. For now, Australia’s top end remains rooted in mid-century and colonial painters.

Market Concentration and Price Trends

As with the broader market, the very top end shows extreme concentration:

• Whiteley alone accounts for nearly a quarter of all sales in the top 200.

• Add Williams, Smart, Brack, Nolan, and Streeton, and the top six together contribute around two-thirds of total sales in the top 200.

When looking at prices, outliers can distort the view, but mapping the top 20 results each year gives a clearer sense of how the market has moved.

A few key observations stand out:

• 2020 was an unusual year (and not just because of COVID): Whiteley’s Henri’s Armchair set a $6m record, alongside a few other works nearing $3m, despite relatively few sales of $1m+ artworks overall.

• 2023 was exceptional for top tier sales, and although 2024 didn’t quite match it, it still ranked as the second best year ever for $1m+ works sold.

• In the 5 years between 2015 and 2019 only 3 works sold for $2m+ . That number was beaten in 2024 alone, and a total of 17 works sold for $2m+ between 2020 and 2024.

• The lower bound of the top 20 has risen over time, signalling stronger competition at the entry point into the top end of the market.

Taken together, the trends show a market that is strengthening from both ends. The standout works are achieving unprecedented prices, and even the lowest-ranked entries in the top 20 are becoming more expensive, a sign of deeper competition and sustained demand at the high end.

Big Picture

When you organise a decade of sales into meaningful groups, clear stylistic and historical patterns emerge. We began with 25 artists who appeared in the top 20, but once the results are broken into categories, whether defined by era, style, or sustained market presence, a more coherent picture forms. The clusters that emerge reflect the movements and themes that continue to shape collector taste today.

What follows is a distilled cheat sheet of the artists who matter most: the names that define the structure and story of the Australian auction market.

• The Standout: Brett Whiteley sits alone at the top of the market, best known for his sweeping Sydney Harbour views and expressive interiors that have become some of the most recognisable images in Australian art and has set the record multiple times for prices realised.

• Mid-20th Century Modernists: Fred Williams, Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale; Arthur Boyd offer four different interpretations of the outback, all highly bankable, and whose works feature regularly in the top 20.

• Figurative and Narrative Modernists: Jeffrey Smart, John Brack, Charles Blackman, and Albert Tucker form a distinct stream of mid-century modernism focused on urban life, psychological tension, and expressive figurative worlds, setting them apart from the landscape-driven modernists of the same era.

• Abstract & Expressionist Modernists: Though they appeared less often in the top 20 results, Ian Fairweather and John Olsen are key post-war figures whose expressive, gestural abstractions form an essential strand of Australian modernism.

• The Impressionists: John Peter Russell, rooted in the Paris circle, and Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin, and Tom Roberts representing the Heidelberg School, often called the Australian Impressionists.

• Contemporary Voices: Howard Arkley and Lin Onus — two of the few contemporary figures to appear on the list, with Arkley’s bold suburban pop imagery and Onus’s blend of realism and cultural symbolism standing apart from the mid-century and historical artists dominating the rest of the market. Tim Storrier, while not featured in the top 200, is another contemporary painter whose work remains highly sought after.

Taken together, these groups reveal the core structure of the Australian auction landscape. While each category plays a role, the mid-century modernists (Whiteley, Williams, Nolan, Drysdale, and Boyd) remain the central force, driving both volume and value at the very top end. But understanding the broader mix around them gives collectors a clearer sense of how the market fits together, and which names truly matter.

Australia’s art market shares similarities with New Zealand, but also some important differences. First, the Australian market is much larger: roughly double the size of New Zealand’s, with significantly more high-value results. In 2024 alone, Australia saw 14 artworks sell for $1m+ AUD and a further 154 for $100k+ AUD, compared with New Zealand’s 2 artworks over $1m NZD and another 48 over $100k NZD (if adjusted for currencies, the gap would widen further).

Second, while Australia did experience a lift during the pandemic, it was nowhere near New Zealand’s dramatic spike. And because the rise was more restrained, Australia avoided the sharp “reset” that followed in New Zealand. If anything, the Australian market has emerged stronger, steadier, and more selective.

One common thread through this analysis is that, despite arguably softer sales overall, the very best works have continued to find buyers at ever increasing prices.

The analysis below is taken from selective auction results across five major art auction houses in Australia: Deutscher & Hackett, Smith and Singer, Menzies, Bonhams, and Leonard Joel. All prices below are in AUD. Further notes on the methodology at the end.*

Total Sales: A Slowdown, then a Rebound

The Australian auction market grew steadily until 2017, peaking at around ~$104m in total sales. Then a came four year subdued period:

• 2018 - 2019: the economy suffered with weak property prices and slow wage growth that curbed the wealth and confidence of many potential buyers,

• 2020 – 2021: COVID further dampened confidence and also impacted supply.

The market then rebounded in 2022 – 2023, with sales once again topping $100m, matching pre-pandemic highs (despite fewer lots being sold). And although 2024 saw a pull back from 2022 and 2023, sales still remains above the long term average.

These high sales figures are being generated from fewer lots than in earlier years. It’s not immediately clear whether this reflects rising prices across the market or stronger performance at the top end. The deeper analysis below helps answer that question.

Unlike New Zealand, which saw a sharp pandemic lift in 2021-2022 and then a clear reset, the Australian market saw more restrained buying during the pandemic that also avoided a corresponding correction. Two factors in particular influenced this: 1) there wasn’t the same number of artworks flooding the market; 2) the inflationary hype driving prices well above pre-pandemic averages was not as extreme in Australia.

Sell-Through Rates: First Signs of a Market Cooling

Sell-through rates have typically sat between 70% to 80% over the last ten years. These rates peaked during the pandemic going just above 80% in 2021, reflecting fewer lots coming to market and stronger buyer competition for what was available.

The concern is 2024 (and 2025, though not depicted above), where rates have slipped below 70%, despite fewer works coming to market. Not every auction house is affected equally, but the aggregate trend is unmistakeable.

As we’ll see below, high quality works still sell and are continuing to achieve record prices. But with fewer lots coming to market and falling sell-through rates, it’s indicative of a cooling market, though one in which the absolute best works still remain in demand. The silver lining for collectors is that with fewer works selling at auction, there are opportunistic buying conditions if you know what something is worth.

Individual Prices: A Split Market Emerges

Average and median prices

Despite softer overall sales between 2018 and 2021, both the median and average sale prices have climbed steadily across the decade. Prices paid today are more than double what they were in 2015.

The median has been pushed higher partly because fewer works are being offered. With a smaller pool of lots, the midpoint of the market climbs. The “# Median Work” measure shows how far down the results you need to go to hit that midpoint and it has shifted noticeably upward over the last 10 years.

Index Tiers: Top 5 → Top 1000

More revealing is the price index for the 5th, 10th, 50th, 500th, and 1000th most expensive work each year. This gives a far more nuanced view of which parts of the market have actually grown and which have not.

The table above shows the raw numbers; the chart below indexes them to 2015 to make the growth rates easier to compare over the decade.

While the exact rates vary depending on the timeframe, the pattern is clear: the strongest appreciation has occurred at the very top.

• Top 5 / Top 10: ~6% annual growth. Dipped in 2020–2022, surged to new highs in 2023, and remain well above long-term levels despite a softening in 2024.

• Top 50 / Top 100: ~2% annual growth. A bumpier path, dipping in 2020, peaking in 2022, easing in 2023, and rising again in 2024.

• Top 500 / Top 1000: Flat over the decade. After a brief 2021–2022 surge, prices have fallen back, with the Top 1000 now at a 10-year low — suggesting casual collectors have stepped away.

This confirms that the market is diverging: premium works are attracting premium spending, while average works are getting average interest.

Concentration: A Market Rules by a Few Names

Sales are concentrated amongst the top artists. Brett Whiteley is in a league of his own, contributing more than $80 million in sales over the last ten years, including the record-setting Henri’s Armchair (2020) which sold for $6.1 million. Sidney Nolan and Fred Williams each add another ~$50m over the decade. The three of them together have averaged 19% of yearly sales over the last decade, though this has fluctuated between 10% and 30%.

Extending this view to the top 10 artists, they have delivered, on average 43% of total sales. Rounding out the list of top 10 artists are Arthur Boyd, Jeffrey Smart, Arthur Streeton, Charles Blackman, John Brack, John Olsen, and Howard Arkley. It’s incredible to see how a small handful of artists and artworks contribute so significantly to the overall market.

And the top 10 artworks have contribute an average 18% of the total sales each year over the last decade. Though in 2023 and 2024 this increased above 20%, again, reinforcing the view that the top end had found confidence coming out of the pandemic. Interestingly, this concentration amongst the top 10 artworks is higher in New Zealand, despite the much lower prices achieved. This is a reflection of the much smaller art market in New Zealand.

It will be interesting to see how demand shifts at the top end, particularly which names collectors will be chasing. I expect to see more women feature strongly in this top tier…

Female Artists: Breaking Records, Not Yet the Ceiling

Recognition of female artists made real gains, the share of sales attributed to female artists has steadily grown over the last decade. Though they still represent a small slice of top-end results. Four women broke the $1m barrier: Emily Kame Kngwarreye (with Earth’s Creation 1 at $2.1m), Ethel Carrick Fox (The Market at $1.46m), Bronwyn Oliver (Tide at $1.23m), and Rosalie Gascoigne (Beaten Track at $1.04m).

Meanwhile, contemporary artists Cressida Campbell and Del Kathryn Barton now routinely hit the $300k–$500k range, with fresh records set in the last couple of years.

The momentum is real but the ceiling is not broken yet. There are fewer works, fewer consignments, and fewer headline prices compared to their male counterparts. But there has been a continued shift towards female recognition from museums and collectors expanding their focus.

Aboriginal Art: A Resilient Market

Sales of art by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists has followed a similar trend to the broader market, with a drop in number of lots in recent years, indicating higher prices being paid for the best works. The segment is led by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, whose 2017 result remains the highest price for an Indigenous artwork sold in Australia.

Lin Onus dominated contemporary results, with multiple works in the $500–800k range. Rover Joolama Thomas, Albert Namatjira, and Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford all saw strong, if more modest, results.

Aboriginal art has a steady presence at auction. Breakout prices are still rare, but institutional and collector interest is rising, particularly with the prominence of Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s exhibition at the Tate Modern. I think this is one of the more interesting segments in the Australian market to watch.

Final Thoughts

Australia has largely avoided the dramatic rise and correction seen in New Zealand and is now moving into a more considered, quality-focused phase.

This is a selective market with the best works continuing to command extraordinary prices, while activity in the middle and lower tiers is steady but subdued. Concentration remains high, and although female and Indigenous artists are increasingly visible, they are still underrepresented in the top tiers.

Turnover remains respectable, but 2024 has clearly cooled. Next month, I’ll take a comprehensive look at the 2025 auction year and the signals it sends for 2026.

Methodology

* The analysis is taken from the auction results across five major art auction houses in Australia: Deutscher & Hackett, Smith and Singer, Menzies, Bonhams, and Leonard Joel. A few specific callouts: 1) Leonard Joel specialises in the lower end of the market - its average sale is under $5k, whereas Deutscher and Hackett, Smith & Singer, and Menzies each average $50k or higher; 2) Leonard Joel comprises about 50% of the lot volume (and this is after I’ve excluded its weekly art sales). To prevent certain data being skewed, I’ve removed Leonard Joel from some analyses above. I’ve called this out where relevant; 3) Smith and Singer was previously Sotheby’s Australia until the end of 2019, after which there was a notable drop in volume.

† The chart above depicts sell-through rates, which shows how many artworks actually sold at auction. Leonard Joel averages just over 50% of the lots I’m analysed, so to prevent too much skew, I’ve removed Leonard Joel to prevent skew in this chart (except for the trend line where it’s specifically included). As you can see it tracks lower before the pandemic, but then converges with the other auction houses.

What stands out most is the momentum. A small group of artists appears repeatedly, and in many cases their strongest works are now selling well above estimate. Even within a relatively tight field, the pressure on pricing is unmistakable, and major pieces are being chased harder than ever. We’ll explore the wider field of Australian female artists in a future issue.

I’ve also included results from Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art), whose sales of Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s work are too significant to ignore. With Kngwarreye currently the subject of a major exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, her international profile is rising fast and that momentum is likely to continue flowing back into the secondary market.

#10 Bronwyn Oliver Sun

Sold for $859k at Smith & Singer in 2024. Bronwyn Oliver’s Sun is a compact but unmistakable example of her hand-formed copper sculptures, built with the precision and patience that defined her work. With fewer than 300 pieces produced before her early death in 2006, her output was always limited, and strong demand continues to push results higher. Sun confirms why Oliver is now regarded as one of the most sought-after Australian artists in the sculpture market.

#9 Emily Kame Kngwarreye Earth Creation II

Sold for $859k at Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art) in 2023. Painted in the same 1994 workshop as Earth’s Creation I (#1 on this list), this companion work shows Kngwarreye working with a cooler, more restrained palette. Blues and whites dominate, with small touches of red, creating a calmer surface while retaining the same direct, physical application of paint. Though smaller in scale, Earth’s Creation II carries the key elements of her late style: broad gestures, layered dots and a move away from the yam-root tracery of her earlier years. The two works together mark a pivotal moment in her practice, when her painting shifted decisively into large, open fields of colour that helped establish her international reputation.

#8 Grace Cossington Smith The reader (the school cape)

Sold for $982k at Deutscher and Hacket in 2025. Painted in 1916, this is one of Cossington Smith’s earliest modernist works and a rare example from this period still in private hands. Her sister Madge sits reading in the hooded Abbotsleigh school cape, captured in the small, bright strokes that would become a hallmark of her style. Even at this early stage, the clarity and confidence of her colour and composition mark it as a significant painting from the very beginning of her long career.

#7 Rosalie Gascoigne Marmalade

Sold for $920k at Smith & Singer in 2023. Marmalade comes from Gascoigne’s celebrated series using retro-reflective road signs—one of the most recognisable materials in her practice. By cutting and rearranging the bright yellow panels into grids and fragments of text, she turned functional signage into something rhythmic and abstract, closer to poetry than traffic control. This body of work marked a key shift in her career, running in parallel with the Schweppes-crate pieces, and Marmalade is a strong example of why these sign works remain so sought after.

#6 Rosalie Gascoigne Beaten Track

Sold for $1.04m at Deutscher and Hackett in 2022, well past it’s $400 - $600k estimate. Where Marmalade shows Gascoigne’s bold, high-contrast sign works, Beaten Track represents the other major thread of her practice: the weathered Schweppes-crate constructions. The crate works have a more natural, grounded feel, built from worn timber and lettered fragments that echo the Monaro region she knew so well. Together, Marmalade and Beaten Track capture the two materials that define much of Gascoigne’s most collected work, distinct in style, but recognisably hers.

#5 Emily Kame Kngwarreye Untitled (Awelye)

Sold for $1.20m at Deutscher and Hackett in 2025, eclipsing its $400 - $600k estimate. Painted in 1992 during Kngwarreye’s high-colour period, Untitled (Awelye) is built from blocks of bright pinks, oranges, blues and maroons layered through dense fields of dots. This was a turning point in her practice, when she moved away from the fine yam-root tracery of her early work and began experimenting with larger gestures and a much broader palette. The result is a lively, confident painting that captures both her deep connection to Country and the surge of creativity that defined this short but important phase in her career.

#4 Ethel Carrick Fox Sur la Plage (On the Sands), Dinard 1911

Sold for $1.20m at Smith & Singer in 2022, this was well past its $600 - $800k estimate. Painted during her summers on the French coast, Sur la Plage shows Carrick Fox working outdoors with quick, lively strokes and a bright modern palette. The striped tents, sunlit sand and relaxed Belle Époque figures give the painting a sense of immediacy and charm, while the colour and movement reflect the influence of contemporary French painting. Fresh, elegant and distinctly her own, it’s a standout example of why her beach scenes remain so sought after.

#3 Bronwyn Oliver Tide

Sold for $1.23m at Smith & Singer in 2024. At four metres long, Tide is one of Oliver’s most ambitious copper works and now the most expensive Australian sculpture at auction. Commissioned for the restaurant Quay and held by the same family for 25 years, it’s a rare large-scale piece from an artist whose works seldom reach the market. Its result reflects both its scarcity and Oliver’s growing reputation as a major figure in contemporary Australian art.

#2 Ethel Carrick Fox The Market 1919

Sold for $1.46m at Smith & Singer (formerly Sotheby’s) in 2019. This same work previously set a record for in 2008 when it sold for $1.01m. Carrick Fox returned often to market scenes, drawn to their colour, light and constant movement, and The Market is one of her strongest examples. Painted in Paris soon after WWI, it brings together shaded walkways, bright produce and a mix of figures passing through the scene, all handled with her fast, confident brushwork. It’s a large, confident painting from the peak of her Paris years, and the clarity of the composition shows exactly why works from this period are so highly regarded.

#1 Emily Kame Kngwarreye Earth’s Creation 1, 1994

Sold for $2.1m at Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art) in 2017. It previously sold in 2007 for $1.06m. Earth’s Creation I is widely regarded as the most important painting of Kngwarreye’s career. It is a huge, all-encompassing canvas painted on the ground in a single sustained session. This was the peak of her late “high-colour” period, when she worked with layered, double-dipped brushes to create dense passages of colour across the entire surface. The scale, confidence and immediacy of the mark-making give the work an unusually expansive presence, and it remains the highest publicly recorded price for any Australian female artist. It has come to represent both the ambition of her late practice and the international recognition her work continues to attract.

Two Emily Kame Kngwarreye works have sold in the US that would each qualify for this list if I were including works sold outside Australia. Alhalkere - Old Man Emu with Babies, 1989 sold at Sotheby’s for $819,000 USD in 2022 and Summer Celebration sold at Sotheby’s in 2019 for $596,000 USD.

Honourable mentions to Bessie Davidson, Margaret Preston, Del Kathryn Barton, Cressida Campbell and Isobel Rae. Each of these artists have had works sell for over $500k.

As mentioned earlier, we’ll look at the depth of talented Australian female artists in a future newsletter. For now, this top ten gives a clear snapshot of where collector demand is heading, and which names are leading the way.

#10 Russell Drysdale Going to the Pictures

Sold for $2.95m at Deutscher and Hackett in 2020. Drysdale’s Going to the Pictures shows a country family dressed in their Sunday best, heading out to the cinema, against a backdrop of hard country life. This work has been included in every major Drysdale retrospective and remains a cornerstone of Australian modern art.

#9 Arthur Streeton The Grand Canal

Sold for $3.07m at Deutscher and Hackett in 2021, well above it’s $1.5-$2.0m estimate. Painted from the top of Palazzo Foscari during Streeton’s 1908 stay in Venice, The Grand Canal shows the ordered geometry of rooftops and waterways with superb control of light and colour. It was re-discovered in time for the 2020 Streeton exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where it was recognised as one of his most important European works.

#8 Fred Williams Masons Falls

Sold for $3.19m at Smith & Singer in 2023. Part of Williams’s celebrated Waterfall series, Masons Falls captures the drama and motion of water cascading through dense bush. Painted at the height of his career, it shows his ability to translate the Australian landscape into bold, abstracted patterns of energy and light.

#7 Brett Whiteley Yellow

Sold for $3.19m at Smith & Singer in 2023. Painted during the peak of Whiteley’s career, Yellow shows a white river winding through a broad yellow landscape, punctuated by blue trees and wildlife congregating around a pond. First exhibited at Bonython Gallery in 1975 and held by the same owner ever since, it’s a major example of his landscape paintings from the mid-1970s.

#6 Brett Whiteley The Wren

Sold for $3.68m at Deutscher and Hackett in 2024. Painted only a few years after Yellow, The Wren shows the same sweeping yellow plains and blue highlights, but shifts the focus to the Bathurst countryside and the small bird that gives the work its name. It captures Whiteley’s late-1970s confidence: fluid, expansive, and at ease in the landscapes that first inspired him.

#5 Brett Whiteley My Armchair

Sold for $3.93m at Smith & Singer in 2013. Painted between Yellow and The Wren, My Armchair turns from the open landscape to the artist’s own studio, where his chair, easel, and view of Sydney Harbour stand in for a self-portrait. First sold in 1976 for $10,000, it then set the auction record for Whiteley in 2023 and became the second most expensive painting ever sold in Australia. That record stood for seven years until another of his armchair paintings took the top spot in 2020.

#4 John Peter Russell Cruach en Mahr, Matin, Belle Île en Mer

Sold for $3.93m at Deutscher and Hackett in 2024, well past it’s $1.5 - $2.5m estimate. Painted on the rugged coast of Belle-Île in Brittany, this morning view shows Russell’s mastery of colour and light, influenced by his time painting alongside Monet. Exhibited at the 1905 Salon d’Automne in Paris and later included in major retrospectives in Sydney and London, it’s a landmark work linking Australian art directly with French Impressionism.

#3 John Peter Russell Souvenir de Belle-Île

Sold for $3.93m at Deutscher and Hackett in 2023, again, well past the $1.5 - $2.5m estimate. Painted on the cliffs near his home on Belle-Île, Souvenir de Belle-Île shows Russell’s wife Marianna leading goats along the coastline at dusk, against a vivid sky of purples and blues. While the previous work on our list, Cruach en Mahr, captured the island’s morning calm, this companion work from the same year conveys Russell’s attachment to the island and to the people who shaped his life there.

#2 Sidney Nolan First-Class Marksman

Sold for $5.4m at Menzies in 2010. Painted in 1946 as part of his landmark Ned Kelly series, First-Class Marksman shows Kelly in his iconic black helmet and armour, aiming a rifle across a sparse bush landscape — a fusion of myth, modernism and personal identity. As the only work from the original 27-painting series remaining in private hands before the sale, its acquisition by the Art Gallery of New South Wales marked a major moment in Australian art history and established the highest auction price ever achieved for an Australian painting at that time. A record that lasted until 2020, which brings us to our final work…

#1 Brett Whitely Henri’s Armchair

Sold for $6.14m at Menzies in 2020. Painted two years before My Armchair (at #5 in this list), Henri’s Armchair expands the same theme, the artist’s studio and view of Sydney Harbour, into a sizeable 3 metre wide, immersive composition that blurs the line between interior and landscape. Created in his Lavender Bay studio, it captures Whiteley at the peak of his career, combining painterly freedom with a deep sense of place. First exhibited at Robin Gibson Gallery in 1975 and held in the same collection for decades, it remains the most expensive Australian painting ever sold at auction.

Honourable Mention: The next artist not already featured in the top ten is Howard Arkley, whose Contemporary Units appears at #16 on the list and sold for $2.5m at Smith & Singer in August this year.

There are two works I’m aware of from before 2010 that would make the list, but before online auction records are available: The Olgas for Ernest Giles by Brett Whiteley sold for $3.5 million in 2007 and Cecil John Brack’s The Old Time sold for $3.3m, also in 2007.

Australia’s top auction results show a market driven by confidence, with Whiteley leading and a small group of others close behind. Next week, I’ll turn to the top female artists.

Walters produced around 13 screenprints during his lifetime (I call these the “Legacy Prints”). After his death, the Walter Estate has continued to release limited edition prints of his famous works (“Estate Prints”).

You can view all the Legacy Prints and his other works on the Walters Estate website. It’s fascinating browsing, giving a good overview of all his work, and a reminder that his practice extended well beyond the koru forms that came to define him.

Today, I’m focusing on the Legacy Prints and Estate Prints, with a short look at his works on paper. And you’ll find my buying recommendations at the bottom.

In the 2020s, almost 80% of Walters’ works coming to auction have been prints, up from roughly 50% in the 2010s (and even lower at the start of that decade). Two factors explain the shift. First, the Estate Prints that started being released in 2016, bringing fresh material to market. Second, there’s been a rise in posters and photos (classified here as “Other Prints”), such as Tama, a 2005 poster for Artspace.

Paintings are excluded for now, as the lack of sales makes it more challenging to provide useful insights, though they remain among the most valuable artworks ever sold in New Zealand.

Legacy Screenprints: Resilience Beneath the Noise

I’ve selected seven of Walters’ Legacy Prints with the most sales: Tawa (1968), Amoka (1972), Then (1980), Kura (1982), Arahura (1982), Tamaki (1983), and Kapiti (1984). Edition sizes range from 25 for Amoka through to 150 for Kura, with Tawa an open edition from the Barry Lett prints.

Some observations on general price trends:

• Most of these Legacy Prints hit highs in 2022, which is interesting because this came a year later than the highs for the Estate Prints, those were already falling in price in 2022. Prices have cooled from the 2022 highs but also look to have now mostly stabilised.

• Edition size appears not to drive price: Kura, with the largest edition size of 150, achieved some of the highest prices.

• There was wide price dispersion in 2022, often 2x between low and high sales in the same year. For example, Arahura sold both at $42,423 and $14,340, and Tamaki sold both at $35,850 and $17,925 (both works had additional sales somewhere inbetween these extremes). Similar price dispersion also occured with Then, Tawa, and Kura.

The most interesting insight though, is that when excluding 2021 and 2022 sales figures (and acknowledging a 2018 spike), the Legacy Prints have mostly held up or increased in value. We’ll see a different outcome when we look at the Estate Prints.

• Grown: Amoka - 2023 average sales above pre-2021 prices; Arahura - second highest price achieved in 2024 and averaging above pre-2021 prices; Kapiti - record price achieved in 2024 and above pre 2021 prices;

• Mixed: Tawa - Barry Lett print, higher than pre-2020 prices; Then - achieved high prices in 2018, has continued downwards throughout 2023 - 2025; Kura - prices in 2023 and 2024 have been similar to 2018 - 2021 prices (with an exception of an outlier in 2021), but has had a low sell through rate in 2023 and 2024); Tamaki - no sales since 2022.

Estate Screenprints: A Bubble and a Correction

The Walters Estate began releasing prints in 2016, revisiting his most famous works, each is in a limited edition of 100: Painting No. 7 (2016); Untitled, 1978 (2018); Genealogy III, 1971 (2020); Tahi, 1969 (2021); Tiki II, 1966 (2022); Genealogy 5, 1971 (2023); and Tautahi, 1970 (2024). In 2023 there was also a very small print released, Te Whiti, 1964 (2023), measuring just 26cm x 19cm.

Looking at auction data for the editions from 2016 to 2022:

• Prices peaked across all editions in 2021 (except Tiki II which hadn’t been released). Prices then fell through 2022 and 2023, before stabilising in 2024 and 2025. Prices have now settled around $5,000 to $8,500.

• Similar to the Legacy Prints, the highest price achieved was often double the lowest in the peak year of 2021. For example, Tahi, 1969 (2021) sold for both $24,625 and $11,950, remarkable for a print released only months earlier.

It’s astonishing to think that three of these prints, which fetched around $20,000 at their 2021 peak, now can trade for less than a third of that. The scale of the decline is best shown by these examples (also depicted in the graph above):

• Untitled, 1978 (2018): Peaked at $19,820 in 2021 but then sold for just $6,093 in 2025. A 69% drop in price.

• Genealogy III, 1971 (2020): Peaked at $19,120 in 2021 but then sold for just $5,975 in 2024. Another 69% drop in price.

• Tahi, 1969 (2021): Peaked at $24,625 in 2021 but then sold for for just $5,377 in 2025. A significant drop of 78% in price.

The other two recent prints, Painting No. 7 (2016) and Tiki II, 1966 (2022), didn’t reach the same peak in prices, but have seen similar falls in value.

Unlike the Legacy Prints, we can’t easily make a comparison with pre-pandemic prices as only Painting No. 7 (2016) and Untitled, 1978 (2018) were released. The limited sales data shows recent prices averaging on par or below the pre-2021 prices.

It’s an cautionary example of how enthusiasm can inflate prices and then correct rapidly. Art is not a guaranteed investment.

Works on Paper: Steady but Flat

On average, 3 - 5 works on paper sell at auction each year, occasionally hitting double digits in 2018 and 2021. However, prices have remained remarkably flat since 2010. Unlike the Legacy Prints, which show steady long-term growth, these works show little price appreciation.

In addition to flat performance, sell-through rates have slipped slightly, consistent with the broader Walters print market.

Conclusions & Buying Recommendations

We’ve looked before at the overall art market peak of 2021–22, but those were broad averages. When you zoom in on individual works, the scale of the surge becomes clear, with prices in some cases quadrupled.

It feels like prices are now stabilising overall. Though there are still records being set… in both high and low directions, so caution and expertise is still needed. Below are my buying recommendations.

Legacy Screenprints: The highest quality prints, such as Amoka, Arahura, and Kapiti have held their value and remain the “blue-chips” of the Walters print market. These are the prints I would choose to own, and are probably good value for around $20,000. Other prints such as Then and Tawa have not held up as well, but also haven’t seen the extreme devaluations of the Estate Screenprints. They could be good buying opportunities now with potential upside and offer a more affordable entry point around $5,000 - $6,000.

Estate Screenprints: These newer prints showcase Walters’ most famous koru forms. At $5,000 - $6,000 they may now represent good value (though at that price point, I would choose Then or Tawa). Have they reached their bottom? Probably. But with some selling below $5,000, it suggests there is lingering softness. Collectors can also go direct to Starkwhite to get the latest print, Tautahi, 1970 (2024), for $5,550.

Works on Paper: This category shows no clear price growth with increasing softness in sell-through rates. There are some fantastic Walters’ works on paper, but I think it’s too hard to judge fair value. I would happily own one of Walters’ koru works, but that’s probably going to be a $40,000 purchase for something the size of an A4 piece of paper.

Like much of the New Zealand market, Walters’ prices have normalised after the pandemic surge. The correction has created room for genuine collectors to re-enter, and for prices to rebuild on steadier ground. Of all his works, the Legacy Prints stand out as the most enduring and they’d be my pick for anyone looking to own a piece of Walters at his best.