LONDON.- Christie's is pleased to announce the first ever European auction of Modern and Contemporary Australian Art to be held on 12 December 2007 in London. Showcasing the scope of Australian art from Impressionist and Post War Art through to the present day, the 98 lot sale will include important works by masters of the field including Frederick McCubbin, Sidney Nolan, Charles Blackman, Howard Arkley and Rover Thomas. Estimates range from £1,000 to £350,000 and the sale is estimated to fetch between £2 million to £3 million.

Nicholas Lambourn, Head of Sale: “With the market for Australian Art continuing to grow and develop internationally, London provides the ideal platform on which to offer the first ever sale of Modern and Contemporary Australian Art staged in Europe.”

Impressionism & The Heidelberg School

Leading the sale and appearing at auction for the first time is Frederick McCubbin's iconic Sawing Timber, 1907 (estimate: £250,000-350,000). Unseen by the public for over one hundred years, the painting is offered by the family of Louis Abrahams, a close friend of McCubbin and fellow artist Arthur Streeton. The Heidelberg School, a small group of plein air artists led by Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and Charles Conder, who painted at Heidelberg, Melbourne over two summers in 1889 and 1890, are generally thought of as the first national school of Australian art. Highlighting this section is Arthur Streeton’s landscape Greaves’s Farm, 1889 (estimate: £100,000-150,000). The Impressionist works include a group of Belle-Île landscapes by the expatriate artist John Peter Russell, the only Australian artist to work with the French Impressionists in France, which is led by Paysanne aux Tournesols, c.1888 (estimate: £80,000-120,000).

Post War Australian Art

Iconic images which defined the Australian school in the post-war years includes Sidney Nolan’s Gully (Ned Kelly), 1964 (estimate: £120,000-160,000); Charles Blackman’s Sleeping Schoolgirl, 1954 (estimate: £70,000-100,000) and Alice among Flowers, 1958 (estimate: £160,000-240,000). From Melbourne-born artist Howard Arkley are two important works Pink House, 1991 (estimate: £60,000-80,000) and Ultra Living, 1992 (estimate: £80,000-120,000). The sale also includes Brett Whiteley's Mrs Christie (estimate: £60,000-80,000) which is unseen in public since it was acquired by the present owner from Whiteley's 1965 exhibition at Marlborough Gallery, London. The work is from the artist’s controversial Christie Series which explored the murders carried out by John Reginald Christie in Ladbroke Grove, London in the 1940s and 1950s.

Contemporary Australian Art

Contemporary Aboriginal art is represented by two of the leading exponents of Aboriginal paintings in the 1980s and 1990s, Rover Thomas’s Tributaries of the Ord River, 1991 (estimate: £70,000-100,000) and Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled, 1992 (estimate: £60,000-80,000). From young Aboriginal artists working in the urban art world, works include Tracey Moffatt’s Something More, 1989 (estimate: £60,000-80,000), her celebrated series of nine cibachrome and monochrome photographs, and Brook Andrew’s mammoth digital photograph Sexy and Dangerous II, 1997 (editioned 2006) (estimate: £10,000-15,000), which looks at the nature of Australian identity at the end of the 20th century.

South African Art

A small selection of works by 20th century South African artists Irma Stern, Gerard Sekoto and Maud Sumner is led by Stern’s superb Congolese Woman, 1946 (estimate: £200,000-300,000) which shows her art at its zenith in the 1940s. It is the most powerful work by Stern to be offered at auction in the last decade and is expected to set a new world auction record for the artist when it is offered at Christie’s London in December.

New Zealand Art

New Zealand works comprise a group of early works on paper by Frances Hodgkins from her years on the continent in 1901-1914 (estimates range from £2,000 to £15,000) and Waterfall, 1964, a classically restrained work by Colin McCahon (estimate: £20,000-30,000).