‘His paintings are magical’: Barry Humphries’s art to feature alongside Dame Edna memorabilia at Christie’s auction – The Art Newspaper

Barry Humphries has had the last laugh—naturally. The fine art fanciers who will be attending the posthumous auction of the entertainer’s collection, in hopes of a distinguished watercolour or rare manuscript, will come face to bespectacled face with his most outrageous creation.

Dame Edna Everage, the comic character by which Humphries is best known, won’t be in the hushed galleries of Christie’s in person—she hasn’t been seen in public since the death of her longtime manager in 2023 and is reported to have entered a nunnery. But the inclusion of pairs of her glasses among the 241 lots, as well as her spangled frocks, will surely summon her presence all the same. “Spooky!” as she might say herself.

Humphries amused television, radio and theatre audiences as the housewife superstar for nearly seven decades, and as other characters, including the heavily-foxed Australian diplomat, Sir Les Patterson across his illustrious career. But perhaps in reaction to his day job, the man who seemed manacled to these much-loved grotesques was an almost self-consciously cultured figure away from the footlights.

In his autobiography, he recalls how as a boy, he fossicked for books in the second-hand shops of Melbourne, much to the disgust of his mother. “You never know where they’ve been, Barry,” she shuddered, and threw his collection away. She was surely one of the fountainheads of Dame Edna. And it wouldn’t be hard to guess what the red-blooded Sir Les would have to say about a star lot in the sale, one of the first copies ever printed of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Number one of 12, it’s inscribed by Wilde to his publisher and has a high estimate of £150,000.

The collection as a whole is expected to raise up to £4m, with some lots benefiting the Royal Variety charity which Humphries supported.

As a young man, he owned a pastel by Whistler: selling it for £40 in the 1950s helped to fund his first passage to Europe, to the palazzos of Venice and from there to the bookshops of London’s Charing Cross Road. Humphries’s son Oscar believes his father was always trying to reassemble the library his mother had scattered.

Perhaps his wife Lizzie Spender ended up cast in the role of gatekeeper. Oscar recalls, “Dad would buy things that he couldn’t afford and—much to the annoyance but also amusement of Lizzie—try and keep purchases secret. All real collectors know the post coital melancholy that follows any extravagant acquisition.”

Humphries was a very active player in the art and books market, selling as well as buying, always on the qui vive for his next must-have. Oscar remembers his Dad calling from Florida, where he was on tour, to say he was buying a sketch by Gustave Dore (The Witch, lot 195) with a residual check he’d received from playing Bruce the Shark in the Pixar film Finding Nemo.

Humphries loved and collected the work of figures associated with Wilde including Aubrey Beardsley and Max Beerbohm. His appreciation extended to other fin de siècle artists, especially of the Vienna Secession group. To remind him of home, Humphries hung the work of Charles Conder, the Australian impressionist, on the walls of the house in north London where he lived for 40 years.

Life of an artist

The sale also features examples of Humphries’ own efforts at the easel. He packed his paints when he went on family holidays. Benedict Winter of Christie’s says, “Barry always said that he would have preferred to be an artist over anything else and his paintings are really magical. There are so many wonderful quotes by Barry about art. He said ‘I’m so glad to see so much bad art because it shows how good I am.’”

Humphries enjoyed learning from others. In his homeland, he’d disappear into the bush on painting expeditions with the Australian artists Arthur Boyd and Tim Storrier.

He was thrilled to have his portrait painted by David Hockney, saying: “You find yourself hoping not that the picture will look like you, but that you, with any luck, will look like the picture.” The life of Barry Humphries, aka Dame Edna, could almost be something out of a fable by his beloved Wilde: the man who presented one image to the world while the art on his wall told another story.

• The Barry Humphries: The Personal Collection is available to view online at www.christies.com. Lots are on display in Christie’s galleries from 7-12 February. The sale is on 13 February