Original Harry Potter Cover Art Up for Auction at Sotheby's
Watercolor painting by Thomas Taylor could fetch between $400,000 and $600,000.
(SPOT.ph) The original cover art for the 1997 literary mega hit “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” is up for bids in New York and is expected to fetch between $400,000 and $600,000, or about P23.5 million and P35.3 million. The live auction is scheduled on June 26.
Piece of Nostalgia
The piece, rendered in pencil and watercolor on a single sheet of paper sized 401mm X 282 mm, was made by Thomas Taylor, who was then 23, “fresh out of art school and an aspiring illustrator,” said Sotheby’s.
“He took a train to London, walked into the Bloomsbury offices, and left some sketches of dragons. A week later, he received a call from publisher Barry Cunningham,” the famed auction house said.
The call was about a book by the then unknown JK Rowling, and Taylor was asked to do the cover. Bloomsbury, the publisher, sent him a printout of the manuscript and “he was entrusted with bringing Rowling’s text into a visual realm.”
“Using Rowling’s description, Taylor was the first person to give the boy wizard a public face, establishing the way the world would see Harry Potter, complete with his trademark dark hair, round glasses, and lightning bolt scar,” Sotheby’s said.
Taylor’s illustration “features more detail” than its reproduction used on the cover of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” that eventually made it to bookstore shelves.
On Taylor’s original, Platform 10 can be seen, “as is more of Harry’s clothing—which is distinctly muggle-like, and suitably shabby—and an impressive plume of steam and stars emanating from the Hogwarts Express,” said Sotheby's. “Then, the image was imbued with sense of magic. Now, for many, it elicits sense of nostalgia."
Taylor is now a book author and illustrator. On his website, he recalled working on the cover, his first ever illustration job. It became the first and only Harry Potter cover he ever worked on.
"Naturally I was quite excited. My first illustration job – Yay! I expect I bought some new pens to celebrate, and maybe a moderately-priced bottle of Belgian beer. There was an incomplete manuscript to read, roughs to do, and then the painting. The final image — a pencil sketch, painted with concentrated watercolour and then outlined with a black Karisma pencil — took two days, and all things considered I was quite pleased with it. I think I delivered it by hand," he said.
The first Harry Potter book started a phenomenon, eventually turning into a film. According to reports, Harry Potter books have sold more than 500 million copies in about 80 languages.
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