For sale: a perfect time capsule of Australian Victoriana

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Unpacking his library in 1931, the German cultural critic Walter Benjamin surmised that a true collector cares far less about an object’s worth than its craftsmanship and provenance. “The whole background of an item adds up to a magic encyclopedia,” he wrote. 

The late Terence Lane spent a lifetime thinking in exactly these terms. One of Australia’s most celebrated curators, who worked for four decades at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), he was also a fervent private collector. The narrow sandstone house he occupied in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton was accordingly a museum-like time capsule devoted to the 19th century; a cache of English Victoriana and Australian decorative design amassed across more than half a century.

Two years after his death the collection remains just as Lane left it. “You walk into the house and you see his passion and style, how effortlessly all the different categories were put together and displayed so beautifully,” says Chiara Curcio, head of decorative arts, design and interiors at Melbourne auction house Leonard Joel. On 3 May almost the entire houseful of art, objects and furniture will be for sale – several thousand objects in total, including furniture, textiles and ceramics. “It’s already curated,” says Curcio of the collection, organised into lots by room. “It’s his life’s work.” 

Highlights include 19th-century paintings by English artist Albert Moore and Melbourne-based Henry Short. Victorian-era decorative trends abound – fern fever, for example, is manifest in a pair of gilded sconces – but there is also an Australiana theme. Colonial landscapes and decorative objects date back to the 1850s, among them an elaborate emu egg centrepiece and a large seashell engraved with an early depiction of the Advance Australia coat of arms officially granted to the Commonwealth nation in 1908.

“Terry single-handedly made Australiana fashionable,” says Lane’s eldest son, LA-based interior designer Hugh Lane. He highlights the 1979 NGV exhibition The Kangaroo in Decorative Arts, which was curated by his father and featured paintings, ceramics and furniture from his personal collection. “He wanted to tell the complete story, not just the fine-arts story.” 

Lane’s fastidiousness for tracking provenance as well as beauty is evident in a paper trail that narrates the story behind each acquisition. “He kept every receipt – at least since 1967,” says Hugh, describing his father’s binder folders filled with notes, correspondence, Polaroids and bills, all carefully organised and dated. “He did us a huge favour,” says Hugh, adding that he and his brother, Edmund, were instructed by their father to sell his collection at auction. “He told me where everything was and what to do with it. I made notes by his hospital bed and emailed them to myself.”

Born in 1946, Lane grew up one of six children in the leafy suburb of Ivanhoe. He became an assistant curator of decorative arts at the NGV at age 21 and is responsible for one of the most significant acquisitions in the museum’s history: the Gallia family apartment, an ensemble of five interiors designed in 1912 by the Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann. Lane capped his NGV career with the 2007 blockbuster exhibition Australian Impressionism, which set visitor records, and he authored many books, including Australians at Home: a Documentary History of Australian Domestic Interiors from 1788-1914. 

“He was a warrior for heritage,” says Curcio. During his lifetime, Lane was pivotal in preserving historic estates of the likes of artist Mervyn Napier Waller (they first met because Lane’s father was his electrician) and contributed to several major restoration projects across Australia, including Werribee Park and the Italianate mansion Villa Alba. 

He bought his Victorian-era house in Carlton in 2007 and carefully restored it, referring to the original paint samples. It had been built by a stonemason whose work can be seen at the Melbourne General Cemetery, and his marble fireplaces and countertops remained intact. While Lane set up his sleeping quarters – and his library – in the 1970s extension at the back of the property, the front of the historic home was dedicated to his cherished collection. 

Hugh recalls how, growing up, his childhood home had no television and everyday family meals took place at the Victorian dining table. “He should have been born in the 19th century,” he says of his father. “He was very analogue, he had no mobile phone.” He remembers rummaging through old cigar boxes filled with weird and wonderful objects, and hopes to keep an early colonial Australian marquetry box. “Thinking back, I would’ve been terrified if I were Dad – letting us kids loose in the house – but he was quite relaxed about it,” he says. 

Above all, Hugh remembers his father as a great storyteller and tireless treasure-hunter. On family trips overseas, Lane would take his sons to museums and antique shops. Many weekends at home meant antiquing around Melbourne. “I found it a drag at the time,” says Hugh with a wistful smile, “but now, of course, I would be thrilled.” 

The Terence Lane Collection auction is at 11am AEST on 3 May, Melbourne; leonardjoel.com.au