“We did not know what it was or who it was by,” said Andrew Swain, head of pictures.
Headlines allege what happened next: “Painting by New Zealand’s leading modern artist takes £14,000 after being identified by Fernhurst auctioneer” reported online news site Sussex World.
Did someone on the other side of the world really just score a McCahon for $31,000?
While Swain last week replied to an initial email from the New Zealand Herald neither he, nor a public relations company for John Nicholson’s, have responded to two follow-up emails seeking to clarify how Lot 176 came to be reported as a McCahon. It was certainly not listed as such in the auction catalogue and an £80-£100 sales estimate gave no suggestion this was an auction to watch.
There were, arguably, other clues.
On the reverse of the painting there was a title, initials and a date – Truth from the King Country Load Bearing Structures, C.McC ‘78. Search the internet for that information and turn up 1300-plus results leading to a single artist’s name: Colin John McCahon.
Did John Nicholson’s Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers research the painting’s title? Does it have more information on the work’s provenance or ownership history? How many people bid on the work? What factors led to its initial price estimate?
Swain has not responded to these questions, but last week told the Herald: “We had no requests for condition reports or extra photographs so had no inkling until the bidding started at £75 and quickly accelerated to over £10,000, much to the delight of the auctioneer and the people (including the vendor) in the saleroom.
“When something sells at auction at a high price, but having had a low guide price, it is known in the trade as a ‘sleeper’,” Swain said.
“You rarely get them these days as the internet and interest generated from it usually gives an auctioneer some clue before the auction day that what they have is more valuable than otherwise thought.”
The Herald understands at least one Auckland auction house that has been approached about the work will not be offering it for sale.
In New Zealand, the most valuable artwork ever sold at public auction was by Colin McCahon – $2.39 million, paid in 2022.
The last time anything by the Timaru-born artist’s Truth from the King Country series went to auction locally, bidding stopped just short of $106,000.
The Sussex-sold painting has the hallmarks of a work from that series.
“I’ve made 31 paintings called Truth from the King Country & am on the next 6 now,” McCahon wrote in a 1978 letter to his friend, Ron O’Reilly. “All small & lovely – yellow, orange, toad green & black – they have taken me 3 months to make. I have been handing them out as gifts to Dunedin people who I owe something to.”
The version just sold in the United Kingdom was described as “black T shape on green and yellow background”. Not noted in the auction catalogue text, but evident from accompanying photographs, was a further identifier – the phrase “large 6” painted inside a small white rectangle.
Truth from the King Country comprises multiple sub-series, one of which is called “Large”. Three images from the “Large” sub-series – 5, 6 and 7 – are easily searchable via an online catalogue of works authenticated by the Colin McCahon Research and Publication Trust.
Curiously, a “Large 6″ is also searchable via the New Zealand Herald.
In 2017, the Herald ran photographs of it to illustrate the differences between an authenticated work from the “Large” Truth sub-series and another (“Large 8”) that had sold for a song at an auction in Surrey, England.
Confused? Compare the authenticated “Large 6” with the similarly titled work sold last month in Sussex, and they look nothing alike – until you turn them over.
Peter Simpson, local McCahon scholar and author of multiple books about the artist, says it is “always hard to be certain” about the authenticity of a painting, even with access to the original.
He said photographs of the reverse of the Sussex-sold work showed it shared many characteristics with known authenticated examples from the series, but: “I am doubtful if this is an original McCahon.”
Simpson says the dimensions listed in the auction catalogue for the Sussex-based work indicated a painting that was “considerably smaller” than other known “Large” examples. He also says a gap between the top of the black “T” (the Tau cross) and the edge of the painting is not consistent with other works he has seen from that sub-series. Meanwhile, the arrangement of the hills, with a separating ridge, was unlike anything he had observed across the entirety of the Truth series.
“These do not look like King Country hills … The painting of the hills, while McCahon-like, does not strike my eye as authentic – more likely a clever copy by someone closely familiar with the series.”
Simpson notes the existence of an already recorded “Large 6” on the Colin McCahon database.
“Colin was careful with his documenting and although he did occasionally make mistakes – spelling mistakes for example – it is extremely unlikely he would have given two works the same number.”
In 2017, it was Simpson who told the Herald the “Large 8” that had been sold in the United Kingdom was unlikely to have been a lost McCahon.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “When I first saw it, I thought it looked genuine. The thing that has made me the most dubious is the handwriting. Although it’s a fair imitation of Colin’s hand, if you compare it closely, there are all sorts of differences in the way that individual letters are formed.”
More recently, in 2021, Auckland’s International Art Centre halted the $87,000 sale of a work called Truth from the King Country: Load Bearing Structures: Series Three while it tried to establish a more complete ownership trail. Back then, Simpson noted anomalies in the information on that painting’s reverse, but also said “if this particular work is a forgery, it is infinitely more sophisticated than any I’ve seen”.
Commenting this week on why the Truth series might be more susceptible to copies than other McCahon’s, Simpson pointed to the sheer number of works across the various sub-series (“nearly 40”) and the relative simplicity of the design.
“Dark T against hill and sky – not too hard to copy perhaps. The works are smallish, but valuable. Most sell these days for around $100,000 … a great return for smallish effort if you can bring it off.”
It’s not impossible a previously unknown McCahon could make it to auction.
Last year, when the Colin McCahon Trust launched a major project to preserve and revitalise its ageing digital archive of more than 1800 works, it called for owners of potentially uncatalogued works to come forward.
Finn McCahon, trustee and the artist’s grandson, noted that McCahon was known in Australia, collectors had taken his work to the UK and, in 1958, he had travelled to America with his wife and fellow artist Anne (nee Hamblett).
“His practice has legs, and for people who understand contemporary art, he fits into this global context. So we don’t know what’s happened behind closed doors out there.”
In a statement to the Herald last week, Peter Carr, trust chairman and the artist’s eldest surviving grandson, said while a number of people had made contact with the trust, no previously unknown paintings had come to light, “a reflection of the strength of the irreplaceable research carried out by the Trust and academics in the early 1990s”.
Carr said the trust, via a panel of experts, had a “rigorous” process for reviewing and verifying artworks thought to be by McCahon. Because the work sold at auction in the United Kingdom last month had not been through that process, “it was not possible to comment on its veracity … ”
Carr confirmed the trust was not aware that the work was for sale and had not had any correspondence with the auction house.
Kim Knight is an award-winning arts journalist with the New Zealand Herald’s lifestyle desk.