One of the most exciting events of the year for Australian art took place on Wednesday night, with an auction of some of the country's most recognisable pieces.
The Gould Collection of Important Australian Art was made up of 74 impressive works, including Sidney Nolan's Outlaw and Burke Lay Dying, Charles Blackman's The Friends, and Brett Whitleley's Galah.
While many artworks exceeded auctioneers' expectations, none managed to make it into the top five most expensive Australian artworks.
The collection had been owned by Rob Gould, a well known and highly respected art dealer, who specialises in Australian art.
He decided to put the collection up for sale, in part so that he can focus more on his contemporary art gallery in Melbourne
''I just felt it was totally wrong to have them tucked away and hidden and not being enjoyed because that's the primary function of art, is to give pleasure,'' Mr Gould said.
"Forget all the other variables that come to play, that's what it's there for, and so it just seemed the right time to do this thing."
The most prized possession in the collection was Nolan's Outlaw, an oil and enamel paint on composition board.
The piece is one of 27 Ned Kelly pieces by Nolan, painted in 1955.
It was expected to sell for between $1.2 million and $1.8 million, but exceeded expectations thanks to some keen bidding and sold for $2.1 million.
Brett Whitley's 1988 piece Galah also performed well at the Gould auction.
It was sold at its expected price of $700,000 thanks to strong public interest in the quirky piece, which features a layer of chicken wire over the painting.
Another piece that did particularly well was Rosalie Gascoigne's piece Ledger, created in 1992.
The piece is made up of split soft drink crates on plywood and was expected to sell for between 160,000 and 200,000. In the end it went for $250,000.
How do they compare to the top 5?
While the Gould artworks performed well, they are still far behind the top five pieces sold at an Australian auction.
Nolan's painting First-Class Marksman, 1946, is the highest valued Australian art piece to have gone under the hammer.
The flat, abstract, piece is central to the Ned Kelly series, for which Nolan is so renowned and sold for $5.4 million.
Whiteley's My Armchair is the second highest grossing piece of Australian art sold at an auction.
The oil-on-canvas piece, painted in 1976, depicts Whiteley's apartment in Sydney and sold for $3.9 million.
Another Whiteley piece, The Olgas for Ernest Giles (Also Known as to Ernest Giles), is the third highest grossing.
The painting is a depiction of Kata Tjuta, a group of large, domed rock formations located south-west of Alice Springs and often referred to as the Olgas.
This piece reflects Whiteley's long fascination with the Australia landscape and sold for $3.4 million.
The fourth and fifth highest grossing pieces are by John Brack, a realist painter who often showed the complexities of modern urban life.
He is considered a divisive artist, with art lovers tending to either love his work or hate his work.
Brack's paintings often include emotionless figures, described as being wooden or mannequin like. However, his ability to capture Australian culture was what won him so much credit.
Number four of the top five list is his piece The Old Time, which shows a couple ballroom dancing. It sold at auction in 2007 for $3.3 million.
Brack's pieces The Bar sold for $3.1 million.
This artwork is a contemporary guise by Brack of Edouard Manet's famous painting, A bar at the Folies-Bergere, replacing the opulence of the 1880s Paris with a more austere Melbourne in the 1950s.
