Auction: Artcurial, November 19th 2016 "L'univers du créateur de Tintin"

Artcurial, the Parisian auction house, has announced the next in their series of comic art auctions, including a day dedicated to the work of Hergé.
Amongst the lots on sale there will be a run of pencil and ink designs for greetings cards (some accompanied by the finished product) featuring Tintin and Snowy, Haddock and the rest in seasonal activities such as sledging and Christmas tree buying.

These come from the forties, are some of the earliest merchandising for the characters, and demonstrate the meeting point of Hergé's skills as both a cartoonist and commercial artist.

In anticipation of strong interest from the Far East, the collection will be displayed in Hong Kong, prior to being returned to Paris for sale in November.

The catalogue for this sale is now up on line - and there is a downloadable PDF too, for your reading and viewing pleasure.

In addition to the greetings card art outlined above, the "star" lot is really "out of this world" - it's a page from Explorers on the Moon!

Page 28, to be precise: showing Haddock leaving the rocket, and venturing forth on the lunar surface for the first time, as well as Tintin, Snowy and the Professor, this is beautiful page, and is bound to see great interest from the art buying public. An estimate of €700,000-900,000 has been placed on it, but I would not be surprised if it exceeded this, and went for over €1m!
Interestingly there is no sign of any signature or dedication by Hergé, which often accompanies a page which he presented to a friend or colleague, so I wonder how this one made its way into the world at large?

Well, the headline of the sale is the fact that the Explorers page reportedly set a new record for a single page by Hergé, achieving €1.55m, which is £1.33m or US$1.64m!

An amazing result, and well in excess of the estimates!

More results as and when I have them.