Australia’s Auction Record Breakers

The headline prices may be out of reach, but they tell an important story about the trophy works that well endowed collectors are chasing.

This week I’m crossing the Tasman to look at the top-selling artworks in Australia. The first and most striking observation is that prices here are on a different scale compared to New Zealand (just like Sydney house prices). Brett Whiteley dominates the list with four works (including the top spot), and while most of the works in this list were sold in the past five years, Sidney Nolan’s First-Class Marksman set the benchmark fifteen years ago.

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#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.