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The Wordsworth family auction in Perth brought together paintings, historical documents, maps and colonial-period Western Australian furniture. In a post-sale report, The West Australian said the portrait of Admiral James Stirling sold for $110,000 and the Prinsep Family Archive for $100,000. Those are selected lot prices, not the total raised: the report did not state the auction’s overall proceeds.
What was the Wordsworth collection auction?
Artvisory held the sale on the Sunday before The West Australian published its follow-up on 14 July 2025. The newspaper reported that 236 lots from the private collection of David and Marie Louise Wordsworth were offered.
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A pre-sale PerthNow story described the collection Sara Wordsworth helped collate as “some 800 lots.” The reports do not explain how that collection-wide description relates to the 236 lots offered at the sale, so the two figures should not be treated as competing counts of the same thing.
The preview called the event Perth’s “most significant” auction and described the Stirling portrait as “never-before-seen.” In context, the latter was a reported claim that the portrait had not previously been available for public viewing in Australia; it is not an independently established exhibition history. Neither phrase establishes a ranking against every other auction or exhibition.
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What were the notable reported results?
The West Australian reported the following selected results. These figures describe individual lots; the report did not provide a complete results list.
| Object | Reported result |
|---|---|
| Portrait of Admiral James Stirling, painted in the 1830s | $110,000 |
| Prinsep Family Archive | $100,000 |
| Seven Henry Prinsep ink drawings | $44,000 |
| Alexander Forrest’s octant | $18,000 |
| Alexander Forrest’s watch | $28,000 |
| Documents belonging to Captain John Thomas | $18,000 |
| Portrait of an Indigenous man | $14,000 |
| Portrait of an Indigenous woman | $14,000 |
| Botanical watercolour studies by Stan Kelly | $42,000 |
The Stirling portrait
The portrait of Admiral James Stirling was the auction’s headline painting. The newspaper said it sold for $110,000 after a five-minute contest between an anonymous bidder on the phone and an anonymous online bidder. It did not identify the successful bidder.
The Prinsep material
The Prinsep Family Archive reportedly sold for $100,000 to a woman bidding on behalf of an institution. The same collector bought seven Henry Prinsep ink drawings for $44,000, according to the follow-up report.
Objects associated with Alexander Forrest
The sale included two distinct objects associated with Alexander Forrest: an octant, which sold for $18,000, and a watch, which sold for $28,000, as reported by The West Australian.
What was in the collection?
The pre-sale coverage described a broad assemblage rather than a collection limited to paintings. It named maps, paintings and colonial-period Western Australian furniture, as well as the Stirling portrait, a diary attributed to explorer John Eyre and objects associated with John and Alexander Forrest. The post-sale report’s selected results also included archive material, drawings, an octant, a watch, portraits and botanical watercolours.
The reporting supplies auction descriptions and selected results, not independent authentication or a complete provenance study for each object. A reported association or attribution should therefore be read as the description used in the coverage, not as a separate verification.
Why did the Wordsworth family sell the collection?
PerthNow reported that the family sold its Peppermint Grove home after David Wordsworth died, leaving the accumulated objects without a home. Their daughter Sara said her mother collected early furniture and documents she considered important to the State and to posterity. Sara described the aim as passing stewardship onward and keeping Western Australian history alive.
“We want to pass the baton of conservation of WA history on, and we want WA to be able to be proud of its history.”
— Sara Wordsworth, as quoted by PerthNow
She also argued for recognising local history alongside the histories people encounter abroad:
“When we go overseas, we go to museums to see the history of their countries. It’s important that we acknowledge what we’ve got here too. It might not be as old, but it’s still as important.”
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Did the auction raise more than $50,000?
PerthNow’s pre-sale story forecast that the sale would fetch more than $50,000. That was an estimate, not a final result. The follow-up reported selected lot prices but did not state total proceeds, so the forecast cannot be presented as the realized total or used to calculate one.
What the sale reports do not establish
The two newspaper accounts do not provide a full catalogue or complete lot-by-lot results, the overall sale total, independent authentication or provenance research, the identities of the anonymous bidders, or the full disposition of every object. They also do not establish that any of the items are currently available for resale. This was a concluded auction of a private historical collection, not a current listing or a museum exhibition.
Sources: PerthNow’s pre-sale report; The West Australian’s post-sale report.
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