By Michael Coulson : With both fewer lots and, accordingly, lower total estimates than last year, Bonhams has moderated its expectations for its October sale of SA art. But it's still one of the most ambitious sales of the year, and again heavily reliant on the two stalwarts of the market, Irma Stern and Pierneef.

The first session at Bonhams' Knightsbridge premises next Tuesday comprises 227 lesser lots, with a gross estimate range of £300 000-£440 000. Wednesday's major session at New Bond Street has 130 lots with an estimate range of £4.3m-£6.4m. The total is thus 357 lots with a range of £ 4.6m-£6.84m. At the time of writing the exchange rate was R14.10=£1, so the low estimate equates to R82.9m. Last year's October sale included 416 lots with a low estimate (at a better exchange rate) of R107.9m.

Nine lots carry six-figure estimates, of which seven are Sterns and two Pierneefs. All told, there are 17 Sterns and 14 Pierneefs in the Bond Street session, and a further three Sterns and two Pierneefs at Knightsbridge. Low estimate for the Kinightsbridge Sterns is £1.75m and for the Pierneefs £930 000, a total of £2.68m, or 58% of the total low estimate (the Knightsbridge works total only £10 000, so won't affect this relationship).

The top estimate for Stern is a portrait of a Malay lady, at £350 000-£550 000, also reproduced in front of the inside back cover. Two items are on £300 000-£500 000: Stern's portrait of a Mangbetu woman and a Pierneef landscape. On £200 000-£300 000 are two more Stern portraits (one of them, Washerman, the cover pic), with others on £180 000-£220 000 and £150 000-£200 000. A scene of the backyard of her house at Rosebank is put at £120 000-£180 000, while the other Pierneef (the inside back cover) is on £100 000-£150 000.

A Stern still life is £80 000-£120 000 while six other works are close to the R1m equivalent on £70 000-£100 000: a pair of Pierneef landscapes (the frontispiece), an Alexis Preller portrait, two more Pierneefs, a Gerald Sekoto genre scene, and Stanley Pinker's The Garden of Eden (the back cover). The other featured lot is the inside front cover, a Kentridge drawing (est £50 000-£80 000)

Most represented artists are, in the Knightsbridge session, Gladys Mgudlandlu (10 lots) Frans Claerhout, John Muafangejo and Douglas Portway (eight each), William Kentridge (seven) and Gabriel de Jongh (six), and at Bond Street, other than Stern and Pierneef, Cecil Skotnes (11) and Freida Lock, Preller, Sekoto and Stella Shawzin (six each).

Bonhams' 2011 October sale was one of the year's disappointments, with only a 36.5% sell-through rate and gross sales (hammer-plus) of R42.1m. The house -- and, for that matter, the market -- will be hoping for a better return this time.