"a total of $1,336,843 was spent at auction [in 2005] on the work of David Boyd for the year...Boyd's brightly coloured acrylic paintings of children by ponds, often flying kites, were among the leading high flyers of the Australian art market."
Big spending on works by David Boyd, Pro Hart and Robert Dickerson suggests a continuing flood of fresh blood into the Australian art market.
Although it raises eyebrows among the supposed art cognoscenti, who consider it pot boiling - making readily saleable works to raise funds - the spending is considered encouraging by dealers and traders because first buyers often opt for works by these artists and then go on to more challenging material.
All three artists have produced a large body of work that is easy to live or identify with - the work which attracts the attention of the new buyers - alongside a more serious body of work.
Although record auction totals for 2005 were helped by the Elders collection with its emphasis on traditional art and a simultaneous increased emphasis on selectively chosen works, spending on the three - whose oeuvres include a large volume of works at a lower price level - continued to boom during the year.
Figures compiled by John Furphy's Australian Art Sales Digest database for 2005 show that a total of $1,336,843 was spent at auction on the work of David Boyd for the year, $885,942 on the work of Pro Hart and $771,026 on the work of Robert Dickerson.
In the previous year $1,408,782 was spent on Boyd, $845,889 on Dickerson and $831,495 on Hart.
A total of 211 works by Hart went under the hammer.
Boyd's brightly coloured acrylic paintings of children by ponds, often flying kites, were among the leading high flyers of the Australian art market.
Every second Tuscan villa on the Gold Coast is said to have at least one charcoal study by Dickerson of a sad man or woman.
Although Rover Thomas at $1.46 million, Clifford Possum at $1.22 million and Emily Kngwarreye at $1.17 million turned over more than any of these artists, no living indigenous artist attracted anything like this turnover.
The biggest turnover was in the work of Maggie Napangardi at $308,640.
This lends little support to those who argue for the introduction of a droit de suite (a royalty from subsequent sales) on the resale of artworks on the basis that it will help emerging Aboriginal artists, although the extended families of the three big money-pulling deceased Aboriginal artists should benefit from the work.
The federal government is looking at introducing the royalty, which is being extended from the European Union to the United Kingdom this year against strong opposition from Britain's art trade and some of its leading artists.
A royalty of 6 per cent is envisaged, although it is not clear whether this will be on the hammer price or the price plus the auctioneer's commission.
Popular artists such as Hart, Boyd and Dickerson would be major beneficiaries, although they have no difficulty in selling their works.
The royalty would also be payable on sales through galleries and presumably private sales.
The biggest local beneficiaries of such a royalty would be the widows of Sydney Nolan and Brett Whiteley, whose works were even more popular than those of Boyd, Dickerson and Hart, and grossed even higher sums at the auctions.
Gary Shead at $1.04 million auction turnover last year would also do handsomely, although this comes after a couple of decades during which his art was out of fashion and sold for much lower prices than it does today.
At $1.99 million Charles Blackman has been down on his luck.
He sold off many of his most important works early and for now historic prices. Should any of these come back onto the market a depleted personal fortune makes him a very worthy case.
Another in line, however, is the widow of Fred Williams, whose work grossed $1.98 million.
Nolan, Whiteley, Blackman, Williams, Arthur Boyd and even Shead are no strangers to the top value-by-turnover lists.
Many of their works individually regularly hit six figures. Dickerson, Hart and David Boyd, however, are also popular in terms of quantity, their average price being much lower and moved up in value sharply in the past two years.
Hart's financial status was helped by the sale of a large bushranging triptych for $99,875 at Christie's in 2003.
David Boyd's turnover has been buoyed by some big prices for key early works by the artist's own spending. He has been buying back major works in the hope of securing a permanent museum or memorial for his contribution to Australian art. But the bulk of his turnover is made up of brightly coloured children in field pictures.
David Boyd's late brother, Arthur, already has such a memorial in the Bundanoon Trust.
The Doncaster Hotel, which has been on the market at Braidwood for over $2 million, has been the focus as one possible venue for a David Boyd museum. One of his daughters, Lucinda, has secured a nearby historic cottage.
The yuppification of Braidwood and moves to heritage-list the whole town have given a new twist to the moves, although museums devoted to single Australian artists are rare.
Lanyon in the ACT with its focus on Nolan, the Arthur Fleischmann house in the artist's city of birth, Bratislava in the Slovak Republic, and the museum in Kirkcudbright in Scotland dedicated to E. A. Hornel, who left Australia as a youth, are among them.
Another auction database, compiled by former auctioneer Edward Craig, shows the size of the David Boyd market.
The records show an average price of $3582 for the 1914 David Boyds reported as sold for a gross of more than $6 million at auction since 1973, when the database was begun.
The record price was $65,000 in 2000 but there has been a higher concentration of big ticket resales in the latest year.
(Unlike Art Sales Digest, Craig's Australian Art Auction Records does not include the buyer's premium which is added to the auction price.)
The blow-out in spending on Pro Hart has been helped by the promotion and activity of Melbourne's Barry Pang.
The auction interest in Hart, Boyd and Dickerson is probably understated by the reported turnovers as AASD and AAAR exclude charity sales which Pang often supplies, although many of these would have been repeats.
Pang last year established an association with the National Australia Bank to talk to top clients about art as an investment.
Australian Art Sales Digest is at http:// www.aasd.com.au or in annual book form and Ted Craig's at http://www.artrecord.com/ or in biannual book form.