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.
"Every time I look at it, some new magic occurs" - Art commentator curator and columnist Hamish Keith
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.