A watercolor drawing for “Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone” has fetched a record amount at auction.
The artwork for the cover of the first book in the series, by J.K. Rowling, fetched $1.9 million at a sale by Sotheby’s auction house in New York on Wednesday.
The dealer said it is “the most valuable Harry Potter item ever sold at auction.”
A first edition copy of “Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone” was considered the highest price recorded for an item from the fantasy series. It sold for $421,000 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas in December 2021.
The new sale of the illustration by Thomas Taylor, which featured in the debut edition of the novel in 1997, involved four-way between bidders for nearly 10 minutes before selling for a record amount.
Its estimate was $400,000-$600,000, which Sotheby’s claims is the “highest pre-sale estimate ever placed on an item of any Harry Potter-related work.”
The watercolor was first offered at auction in 2001 at Sotheby’s London when only the first four books in the series were published.
At the time, the depiction of the budding wizard, with his dark hair, round glasses and lightning bolt scar, on his way to Hogwarts on board the train was estimated at 20,000 pounds to 25,000 pounds ($25,250-$31,560) before being sold at 85,750 pounds.
Taylor, who went on to write the children’s series Erie-On-Sea, had his first professional commission with Harry Potter at 23.
Following being asked to illustrate the character by Barry Cunningham at Bloomsbury, Taylor took two days to complete the illustration.
He used concentrated watercolors on cold-pressed watercolor paper and outlined with a black Karisma pencil.
Taylor was among the first to read the manuscript.
All bids include the buyer’s premium.
