The original watercolor illustration from the first edition of “Harry potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”the book that introduced the young magician with glasses to the world, Sold on Wednesday for $1.9 million. The work of art becomes “the most valuable Harry Potter item ever sold at auction”Sotheby’s auction house said in a statement.
“The illustration was pursued by four telephone and online bidders for almost ten minutes before being sold to applause.”
The work of Thomas Taylorwho was only 23 years old in 1997 when he painted the iconic image of the boy with the lightning bolt-shaped scar and the round glasses, was expected to fetch between $400,000 and $600,000 at Sotheby’s. Taylor was working in a children’s bookstore in Cambridge, UK, when Bloomsbury publisher Barry Cunningham commissioned him to paint the image for JK Rowling’s book.which would go on sale in London on June 26, 1997.
According to Kalika Sands, a book specialist at Sotheby’s, he was one of the first people to read the book and received a first copy of the manuscript that served as the basis for his artwork. “So he knew the world before anyone else and it was he who had to think about how to visualise Harry Potter,” Sands told AFP ahead of the auction.
Rowling and Taylor were unknown when the book was published, and few expected it to become a global phenomenon. Only 500 copies of the first edition were printed, and 300 of them were sent to libraries., according to Sotheby’s. But the book soon became a runaway bestseller.
Now, 27 years later, the “Potter universe” includes Rowling’s seven original booksa blockbuster film franchise, a critically acclaimed play and video games. More than 500 million copies have been sold in 80 languages. When the illustration was first offered for auction at Sothesby’s in London in 2001, it fetched just £85,750 – about $108,500 at today’s exchange rate – but only four books in the series had been published by then.
/ Instagram @harry_potter.books
