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Siobhan Duck talks to Basil Sellers -- the philanthropist, art collector and confessed sports tragic -- about his latest venture
AS A boy, Basil Sellers was plucked from a life of luxury in India and shoe-horned into a tin attic in Adelaide. It was boiling in summer, freezing in winter and all the family slept in one bed.
These days the 72-year-old, softly spoken multi-millionaire jets between his apartment in an expensive London suburb, his Alps- fringed French villa overlooking the Mediterranean and his home in exclusive Double Bay, Sydney.
He counts Ron Barassi and Kevin Sheedy among his closest friends, has many buildings named in his honour, and owns an art collection that would make the NGV pea-green with envy.
Sellers has the business nous of Donald Trump, a James Packer- esque gaggle of celebrity friends and a philanthropic streak akin to that of Bill Gates.
But unlike his high-flying peers, most people have not heard of Sellers. He has always been a quiet achiever.
The reserved father of three has shied away from the limelight -- until now, that is -- to concentrate on his family, his business and his great passions: art, cricket, football and wine.
A new art prize bearing his name has forced him to take centre stage this year. He hopes the $100,000 Basil Sellers Art Prize will be to sport what the Archibald is to portraiture.
Sellers, since discovering art at age 40, feels as comfortable with the champagne-swillers at a gallery opening as he does in the stands of the SCG watching his beloved Sydney Swans. He wants his prize to finally unite the traditional adversaries of sport and art.
"I have been contemplating for several years why not a lot of sport is depicted in art, because artists really mirror the community," he says.
"Toulouse-Lautrec was inspired by the nightclubs and Degas ballet . . . so why not sport?"
Herald Sun art critic Jeff Makin says Sellers' annual prize -- one of Australia's richest -- makes the much-revered Archibald look like "luncheon money".
"In a great sporting nation such as ours, the absence of a sports- themed prize has been painfully noticeable," Makin says. "This prize will unite the two great strands of our culture."