Brett Whiteley and Sidney Nolan works among former Melbourne lord mayor’s acollection to be sold at auction

The former lord mayor of Melbourne Ron Walker was known for his billion-dollar property deals, casino developments and a knack for snaring major sporting events such as the Grand Prix and Commonwealth Games. But tonight a very private passion of the businessman, who amassed an estimated personal fortune of A$978m before his death in 2018, will be on show.

Twenty artworks from Walker’s deceased estate, along with seven Arthur Boyd paintings and one sculpture from the personal collection of the retired Sydney veteran art dealer Denis Savill, will be auctioned off by Smith & Singer (formerly Sotheby’s Australia) in Melbourne. Works by Brett Whiteley, Sidney Nolan, Charles Blackman and Albert Tucker are also among the trove.

Geoffrey Smith, the Smith & Singer chair, has described Walker’s collection as one of the most significant and focused private collections of Australian art assembled in the past 50 years.

The trio of Whiteley works are expected to collectively fetch in excess of $5m, with the auction house expecting the 1967 portrait of Wendy Whiteley, Her, to sell above $2m.

The painting caused a sensation when it was included in the artist’s solo exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art in London later that year and led Whiteley to become the youngest artist acquired by the Tate Gallery in London.

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Smith described the 1.8 x 2.3m work, which has never gone to public auction before, as one of Whiteley’s most direct and ambitious statements on the theme of the female nude.

“It’s an incredibly disarming and intimate work and quite extraordinary, because you have the artist looking at his subject and the subject looking right back at him,” said Smith.

“So that wonderful eye, that blue eye, is staring back not only at the artist but also back at us, the viewers.”

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Two other Whiteleys, Reclining Nude (1978) and Not I – Me (1967), are expected to fetch more than $1m each.

Blackman’s The Sleepwalking Nude first featured in the artist’s breakthrough solo exhibition in Melbourne in 1968 and toured Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth for a 1993 retrospective. It is considered one of the works created during the height of Blackman’s career and is expected to sell for more than $500,000.

Sidney Nolan’s Approaching Storm, which has been owned by Walker since 1988, is one of four of the artist’s oil on canvas works going under the hammer, along with two John Olsens. Nolan’s Approaching Storm was painted on the set of the 1985 Australian film Burke & Wills, which starred Jack Thompson and Nigel Havers.

It was one of several created on location, with the saturated colours lending the works an “extraordinary kind of filmic quality … almost like Technicolor celluloid”, Smith said.

Smith said the tireless promotion and advocacy of Arthur Boyd was evident in the artist’s works going to auction on Wednesday.

“It is a testament to and celebration of the special relationship that existed between two highly formidable and influential figures within the story of Australian art,” he said.

Eltham Dam is one of several Boyd works created as part of his landscape series from the 1950s, which took its inspiration from Melbourne’s rural outskirts.

The picture’s location, known today as Pecks Dam Reserve, is believed to depict a member of the Peck family fishing for yabbies. The work was only acquired by Savill in 2022, after being held in the private collection owned by Boyd’s brother, the sculptor Guy Boyd, for many years.

“Denis simply could not resist this painting, and he bought it for his personal enjoyment,” said Smith. “And he considers it, and I do, one of the most beautiful landscape paintings produced by Boyd in that decade.”

Eltham Dam has an estimated worth of between $550,000 and $650,000.

• This article was amended on 24 July 2024. An earlier version incorrectly stated Eltham Dam was acquired by Denis Savill in 2015.