Auction: Artcurial, November 18th 2017 "L'univers du créateur de Tintin"

It's that time of year, and the celebrated Paris auction house Artcurial are having a day of BD related sales, with a morning devoted to Hergé, and an afternoon of lots from a variety of star cartoonists, including lots to be sold in aid of the autism charity, La Bonne Aventure.

The Hergé sale is made up of many interesting books - including and a signed copy of the 1969 edition of Soviets, and a 1953 edition of Objectif Lune, with a hand-written dedication from Hergé to Henri Ghion, not long after he started working as a colourist art the Studios, and just as Henri was starting his own BD career under the pen-name Géri - and memorabilia items such as models and statues from Aroutcheff and Leblon-Delienne, and greetings cards from the Studios, but the star lots are original artwork from books and publicity material, notably a space-themed game.

You can find a downloadable PDF of the Hergé catalogue here, and the general cartoonists sale here.

The Hergé auction was a little muted, but while several lots failed to reach their reserve price, and thus remained unsold, many did well.

The star of the day was an image from the cover of Le Petit Vingtième, from the 14th of February, 1939, showing the scene in which Tintin is being led to meet Colonel Boris Jorgen at the Palace. In addition to being the original art for the cover, it has later been hand coloured by Hergé in watercolour, presumably to be presented as a gift to someone. This went for €400K, below the estimate, but still a very significant figure for a very nice piece of art.

The first two strips of the black and white newspaper version of The Shooting Star made €300K.

An interesting set of three related lots for work for a card game also got some interest.
The biggest lot was the line-art for the box, together with the colour-scheme in gouache, a letter from the Studios to the manufacturers, the text for the rules of the game, and a set of the final game. This made €16K.
It was followed by a lot of the artwork for the faces of the cards, which depicted vignettes from several of the books. This reached €12K.
Finally, the artwork for the back of the playing cards (as per standard playing cards there needed to be a single design) made €5K.
It's to be hoped that a single buyer managed to reunite all three lots...!