Forget Hirst, buy Pooh
The contemporary art market may be floundering as the recession sets in but illustrations by EH Shephard of AA Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh fetched a record £1.2m ($1.96) at a Sotheby's auction yesterday.
The sale of ink drawings, previously owned by American lumber and petroleum heir Stanley Seeger and his friend Christopher Cone, was 95% sold by lot and 99.8% sold by value - no mean feat in the current market when even work by British super artist Damien Hirst is being left on the shelf.
The London auction raised double its pre-sale low estimate with more than 80 clients bidding by telephone and in the saleroom.
The top-selling lot was EH Shepard's illustration, ‘He went on tracking, and Piglet . . . ran after him’, which sold for £115,250 versus a pre-sale estimate of £40,000 to £60,000, establishing a new auction record for a drawing by Shepard.
Another well-loved ink illustration, ‘Bump, bump, bump – going up the stairs’, sold for £97,250, versus a pre-sale estimate of between £50,000 and £70,000. The ink drawing represents one of the most well-known images of the characters and comes from the final chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh:
“He nodded and went out . . . and in a moment I heard Winnie-the-Pooh – bump, bump, bump – going up the stairs behind him.”
The collection also included books by AA Milne, some of which were signed or inscribed by the author. A first limited edition of Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), a presentation copy from Milne to Shepard, fetched £39,650 against an estimate of £15,000 to £20,000.
Dr Philip Errington, Sotheby’s specialist in charge of children’s literature and illustrations, said: “The interest from around the world in these superb drawings, and the highly competitive bidding from many buyers, has demonstrated the world-wide appeal of Winnie-the-Pooh.”
UK-listed auction house Sotheby's contemporary art sales have not been quite so golden. Last month it lost more than $28m on contemporary art sales in just two days.
The auction house admitted in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month that it had taken another $10.6m in losses on guarantees offered to sellers in its two-day contemporary art sale in New York on November 11 and 12. This loss is on top of $17.6m in losses on guarantees that Sotheby’s had said it expected to take on the sale. In all, Sotheby’s has lost more than $52m on guarantees in the past three months.
The auction on November 11 and 12 in New York saw only 66% of the lots sold and total sales revenue amounted to just $204m, well below the most pessimistic estimates of $429m.
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