Howard Arkley bidding war drives fresh records
Bids ricocheted around a Sydney auction room last week as collectors battled to secure a Howard Arkley masterwork called Neapolitan delight, driving the picture up to $2.5 million including buyer’s premium and the top of the 2025 auction sales league table.
It was a new auction record for the late Melbourne artist, whose work was inspired by pop culture and by what he called the “second degree imagery” abounding in suburbia, such as wallpaper and fabric designs.
On what proved to be a buoyant night for art prices, desire for the eye-popping Arkley saw auction aficionados reaching for all the tactics in the playbook. The 1993 painting eventually fell to a telephone bidder, but not before auctioneer Roger McIlroy had fielded a barrage of telephone and in-room bids.
Unusually for a post-Covid auction, the bidding in the room and on the phone was so rapid that online bidders couldn’t keep up and didn’t get a look in.
Deutscher + Hackett estimated the work would sell for between $1 million and $1.5 million, and rapid-fire bidding quickly reached the lower number. It briefly stalled at that point before McIlroy accepted the next bid of $50,000, setting off another flurry.
“Bidders were trying to trip each other up with different types of bids,” auction firm director Damian Hackett told Saleroom after the action.
“They would do a half bid, then they would do one and a half bids, then back to half bids, then they’d go to two bids.
“From a million dollars, the bid increment is $100,000. So when you get to a million, the auctioneer will be asking for the next bid of $100,000.
“So if someone at that point offers a half bid, it’s $50,000, and the auctioneer decides then whether that is in the interest of the lot or whether he should just hold out for the full bid. In this case, he took the half bid, and that then triggered further bidding.
“Bidding $50,000 tests the water to see whether there’s anybody else bidding against you. If nobody bids against you, you get (the work) for $1,050,000.”
In this case, the bidding water was still hot and bidders starting offering McIlroy amounts above the normal increments.
“People (were) trying to do a knockout bid by throwing in a bid of $150,000,” Hackett said.
“Obviously people kept in the game until $2 million,” the hammer price.
Were these nerves-of-steel bidders agents acting on behalf of collectors?
“No, not at all,” Hackett said.
“People love this thrill of the chase. I mean, some people would employ an agent to go into an auction with instructions. But many, many more people really enjoy the process. There’s a lot of emotion that goes into it, and the drive to compete and then the joy of taking home your winnings.”
Whoever came out of the scrum with the Arkley in their ownership must be someone with a big wall. Neapolitan delight measures a voluminous 172.5 x 254 cm, making the depicted furniture nearly life size.
The work was consigned to the auction by Swiss art collector Uli Sigg, who also consigned the other Arkley in the auction. That one, titled Floral Interior, 1996, fetched $243,750 against a pre-sale estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. Sigg acquired Neapolitan delight through Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne in 1994.
Elsewhere in the evening’s sale of 76 lots, Clarice Beckett’s Bathing Boxes, Beaumaris, c. 1932, fetched $175,000 (estimate $80,000 to $100,000); Arthur Streeton’s atmospheric painting of Venice, La Salute, 1908, fetched $1.5 million; Grace Cossington Smith’s The winter tree, Turramurra, 1935, fetched $687,500 ($250,000 to $300,000) and Ben Quilty‘s Hank, 2004, fetched $162,500 ($80,000 to $120,000).