Auckland auction houses would love your art – no need to travel

Henry Newrick, of Heritage Art in Whanganui, has made art auction arrangements with some of New Zealand's leading art auction houses. Photo / Paul Brooks

For more than 50 years Henry Newrick, director of Whanganui-based Heritage Art Auctions, has been buying and selling art, rare books and photographs, not just through his recently established, local auction house, but using auction houses in Wellington, Auckland, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Heritage Art Auctions is ideally placed to sell medium-priced artworks (up to $10,000) to its fast-growing database of collectors, and excellent prices have been achieved. This includes the sale in October of a 400-year-old Dutch painting showing a naval battle between the English and the Spanish for $10,000 when it had been valued at just $100 by a well-known Wellington auctioneer.

Recognising that his own auction house fills a clear market need, Henry is also conscious there exist in Whanganui and surrounding regions many higher-priced artworks that are best offered in a major centre such as Auckland with its 1.65 million population and thousands of serious art collectors.

With the advent of Covid, many industries have changed forever – and auction houses are no exception. Before Covid, a typical auction auctioneer might have had 100 people in the saleroom and 100 bidding online. Now that same auction house will have no one in the saleroom and up to 4000 people bidding online from the comfort of their homes. More and more auctioneers are now moving to the online model.

What this means is instead of three or four people bidding on a single lot, now there may be seven or eight. It also means instead of an auction consisting of say 200-250 lots manually closing at the rate of 60-80 an hour, now there may be more than 1000 lots automatically closing in blocks of 8-10 every two minutes (240-300 an hour). With up to seven or eight bidders chasing any particular lot, prices have risen considerably.

From Whanganui to Auckland the driving distance is 445km and the journey time a little under six hours if taking State Highway 4 (Parapara), which a lot of people don't like with its frequent slips. To take a painting to Auckland for sale would involve a day's driving followed by an overnight stay and then the return journey – with all the associated costs. Then, if the painting failed to sell – a repeat trip at some later date.

Now, for the first time, and following an arrangement between Heritage Art in Whanganui and some of this country's leading art auction houses, you can sell your expensive art (minimum value $10,000) and rare books at auction in Auckland for the highest price without having to face the prospect of one or two return journeys to Auckland.

So if you have a Hodgkins, Goldie or McCahon gracing your walls and are downsizing or simply wanting to realise some cash, then give Henry Newrick a call at Heritage Art. He'll give you an estimate of the likely value based on prices taken from a database of more than 12,000 artists and 650,000 artworks sold over the past 50 years. He can be reached on 027 471 2242.