Melting Moments I - Bill Hammond Photo: Webbs Auction House
A painting by Christchurch artist Bill Hammond has sold at auction for just over $1.7 million.
Melting Moments 1, an acrylic on canvas work measuring roughly 1.6 x 2.1 metres, features Hammond's iconic bird people.
He started painting 'bird people' in the 1990s following a visit to some remote sub-Antarctic islands.
Art commentator curator and columnist Hamish Keith described it as "an astonishing price".
"But let's not mistake price for value, because I have to say that this is an extraordinary work, it's unbelievably beautiful. It's a great work of the imagination," Keith said.
"Every time I look at it, some new magic occurs."
Christchurch artist Bill Hammond, who died in 2021. Photo: Auckland Museum
Keith first saw Hammond's work sometime in the 1980s at a gallery in Christchurch.
He described Hammond as a "bit of a recluse" who did not go out much but had a "marvellous rock band at some stage".
"He was just so completely taken by this view of the world."
It was one populated by birds - which in a sense was what the world was, he said.
Art was a difficult creature to tie down, he said, but when it was a New Zealand work it celebrated us as well as the artist.
Keith hoped the painting does not disappear from sight.
Hammond died in 2021.
The most expensive artwork ever sold in New Zealand to date is a 1982 work by Colin McCahon, which sold for $2.45m at auction in September 2022.
