By Alison Barclay

THE National Gallery of Victoria has paid $823,500 for an important Australian picture that has been tucked away in a rural Victorian home for 150 years.

The family portrait, Masters George, William and Miss Harriet Ware with the Aborigine Jamie Ware by Robert Dowling (1827-1886), was to have been auctioned in Melbourne next week.

But NGV director Gerard Vaughan -- who was beaten to another significant work, John Brack's The Bar, at auction last year -- convinced auctioneer Chris Deutscher to take the picture off the market.

It is believed the National Gallery of Australia also was keen to buy the work.

Vaughan yesterday emphasised the plight of the NGV, which receives no government money for acquisitions and finds it increasingly difficult to compete for costly major works.

"It is clear, given the buoyancy not only in the Australian market and the international markets, that if the NGV is to secure great masterpieces it is essential that significant sums of money are made available,'' he says.
"Our failure to secure John Brack's iconic work The Bar a year ago focused community attention on the NGV's need to secure financial support within the community.''

The NGV's chief tool of persuasion this week was the purchase price, well above the $550,000-$650,000 pre-sale estimate. However, Deutscher says the portrait's owners -- descendants of the Ware family -- wanted the picture to join a public collection. The NGV owns other pictures that once belonged to the Wares, including Dowling's 1882 portrait of Annie Ware, as well as his 1874 epic A Sheikh and his Son Entering Cairo on their Return from a Pilgrimage to Mecca.

"There was always going to be intense museum interest and the NGV has moved quickly to secure this treasure,'' Deutscher says. "The owners are delighted the work will remain in Victoria and on public display.''
In the 1856 portrait, Western District squatter Joseph Ware's children are depicted with an Aboriginal servant, who became their friend.
That the NGV grabbed it is a pat on the back for new auction house deutscher and hackett, which will hold its first sale -- now minus its catalogue cover image -- on May 9 and 10.

D&H is the result of art dealer Deutscher's parting last year from Sydney businessman Rodney Menzies, with whom he had operated Deutscher-Menzies since 1998.

A Federal Court case in which both parties seek the right to use the Deutscher name will continue on June 8.

Deutscher, meanwhile, has spent eight weeks and more than $300,000 outfitting his new Prahran showroom, which opened last night with a party for 300 guests.

"I lugged these bookshelves and Ikea trolleys myself,'' he says proudly, surveying the former car showroom neatly redesigned by architect Nonda Katsalidis.

Next week's auction -- tipped to take more than $7 million -- includes works by Rosalie Gascoigne, Arthur Boyd and Bronwyn Oliver, as well as consistent best-sellers Sidney Nolan, Brett Whiteley and John Brack.
Caption: Fine design: this Robert Dowling portrait of the Ware children was sold before auction to the National Gallery of Victoria by Damian Hackett and Chris Deutscher.