Gully tops sale at Wellington

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32705, 7 September 1971, Page 10

Gully tops sale at Wellington

water-colour by John Gully fetched the top price at an auction of early New Zealand and European paintings, drawings and prints in Wellington on Friday.

Bidding for the painting, which depicts Collingwood from Golden Bay, Nelson, began at $5OO and went rapidly to $l2OO before the auctioneer’s hammer came down.

The painting was sold subject to the consent of its Napier owner.

A small water-colour by Frances Hodgkins, entitled “Picnic on a Beach,” sold for $9OO after spirited bidding.

A water-colour canal scene by the same artist was knocked down first for $550. Later in the evening, because a reserve had been placed on the paintihg, it was submitted again for auction. The second figure was lower than the first, at $525. An oil by a tutor of Frances Hodgkins, Girolami Pieri Nerli —“An Italian Farm Girl in Doorway”— sold for $B5O. A water-colour by Frances Hodgkins’s sister, Isobel Field, fetched $llO. Petrus Van Der Velden’s

“Study of a Dutch Woman in Black” was sold for $550, subject to the owner’s consent.

A South Island mountain scene by J. C. Hoyte fetched $4OO, while one by a Kelliher Prize winner, R. B. Watson, of schoolboys fishing at Island Bay, realised $9O.