Auction Announcements
Posted on 5 May 2016
ART+OBJECT is proud to announce that across two nights, on September 7th and 8th, it will auction the legendary collection of Wellington couple Tim and Sherrah Francis. Across some six decades they assembled one of the most important private art collections in New Zealand, most of it never seen publicly before. The sale of the collection will be the biggest art market event since the sale of the Les and Milly Paris collection four years ago.
They were a remarkable couple. Tim Francis was the New Zealand Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1978 - 1982) and Ambassador to the United States of America (1988 - 1992), the latter in the crucial period in which New Zealand declared it would be nuclear free. He was central to the important collection of New Zealand art assembled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and was also crucial to the success of the exhibition 'Pacific Parallels' in the United States. Sherrah Francis' career in history included being Art Librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library and Senior Archivist at the National Archives. The couple married in 1954 and soon after acquired their first artwork, a Dennis Knight-Turner landscape. Always curious, with an impeccable eye, Sherrah's other great passion was early New Zealand studio pottery, particularly by potters such as Briar Gardiner, Olive Jones, Elizabeth Lissaman, Jova Rancich and O.C. Stephens. Tim passed away early this year, and Sherrah followed him two months later, both at the age of 87.
The Tim and Sherrah Francis Collection features seldom-seen, museum-quality paintings by the vast majority of this country's most important and recognized artists including: Colin McCahon, Rita Angus, Toss Woollaston, Gordon Walters, Michael Illingworth, Bill Hammond, Shane Cotton, Michael Smither, Milan Mrkusich, Pat Hanly, Tony Fomison, Richard Killeen, Bessie Christie, Adele Younghusband, Yvonne Todd and many more.
ART+OBJECT will produce a publication devoted solely to the collection and exhibition viewings of the collection will be conducted in both Wellington and Auckland. To pre-order a catalogue email info@artandobject.co.nz.
Image: Tim and Sherrah Francis at the Dowse Art Museum viewing the exhibition, Peter Peryer: A Careful Eye in 2014 (image courtesy of Jim Barr and Mary Barr).
