In 1999, Whiteley's painting "The Jacaranda tree" (1977), which had won the Wynne Prize, sold for , a record for a modern Australian painter at that time. Before this, his previous highest-selling work was "The pond at Bundanon" for A$. In 2007 his painting "The Olgas for Ernest Giles" was sold by Menzies for an Australian record of A$3.5 million. On 7 May 2007, "Opera House", (which took Whiteley a decade to paint, and which he exchanged with Qantas for a period of free air travel) sold for A$2.8 million, in Sydney.