One of the most famous images of Winnie the Pooh fetched £314,500 at an auction, three times its estimate.
The auction of illustrator EH Shepard’s ink drawing of author AA Milne’s adored characters Pooh, Christopher Robin and Piglet broke the world record for any book illustration sale at Sotheby’s auction house, reported the Deccan Chronicle.
The framed drawing entitled ‘For a long time they looked at the river beneath them’, shows the trio standing on a bridge looking excitedly into the river below.
The illustration, which first featured in AA Milne’s second book, The House At Pooh Corner in 1928, had been in a private collection since being acquired at Sotheby’s nearly 40 years ago. Philip Errington, director of Sotheby’s book department said, “The illustration can be counted among the most familiar, and most loved, cultural references in English literature.”
The auction house described it as “probably the most famous and evocative book illustration of the 20th century”. “It’s an incredibly important piece, it’s reproduced twice within ‘The House at Pooh Corner’, and I had great expectations that this would catch people’s imagination but it exceeded all our expectations,” Errington said.
The auction record for a Shepard drawing was just under £140,000, while the record for a book illustration was previously £290,000. “We’re very happy we’ve smashed those two world records,” Errington said.
Sotheby’s sold the work in 1971 and 1974 but the signed original has since been in a private collection. “Back in 1974 it sold for a few hundred pounds, certainly below the thousand mark, so this is an indication of how the market in book illustrations has just soared recently,” said Errington.
Other items for sale at the auction in London included classic children’s works by Beatrix Potter, Mike Margolis and Arthur Rackham.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 12th, 2014.
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