Whenever a large wool tapestry appears at Leonard Joel, it’s worth noting that works of this scale are rare to market. More often than not, such a piece is a visitation from the 1970s, a period when tapestries enjoyed a surge in popularity. Ben Shearer, the artist known to many as a watercolourist of Australian landscapes with an aerial sensibility, also produced some extraordinary works in wool.
The scale and medium of these pieces inevitably narrows the collecting field of appetite, yet it is pleasing to see them move quietly through auction, without too much fuss. At times, we have even sold works from that period, now half a century old, for as much as three thousand dollars.
My first encounter with a Ben Shearer tapestry was in the mid-1970s. I was visiting a besser brick home in Malvern – one of those quintessentially 1970s residences with a central open-plan design. A staircase rose through the space, allowing you to walk up and look down from above. And what we looked down upon was an extraordinary Shearer work, almost sculptural in its presence.
From memory, I knew it as The Three Wise Men. I recall it as a young child, struck by its immense scale. Beyond that, it was the way it hung, how it completely occupied a wall that stretched over two floors, and the true three-dimensionality of the work. As a child, I found it deeply inspiring. That remains my singular memory of that home.
As my mother would say, it is “lovely” to see these works of art, perhaps the less typical ones in terms of medium, finding their way back onto the market, to be rediscovered and recollected by new generations, now half a century later.
By John Albrecht, Managing Director & Head of Important Collections
Top Image: A Ben Shearer wall hanging ‘Sunset 1985’. Sold for $3,000
August 2026