Thomas Taylor illustration.
Photo: Courtesy of Sothebys
Auction of the Week: Original Illustration for Harry Potter Book Sells for $1.9M at Sotheby’s
Thomas Taylor’s original cover artwork for the legendary book smashed its low estimate of $400,000, becoming the most expensive item relation to the series
Thomas Taylor’s illustration. Photo: COURTESY OF SOTHEBYS
There is perhaps no book more recognized and beloved in pop culture than the Harry Potter series. And this June, an auction at Sotheby’s confirmed that. On June 23, Thomas Taylor’s original watercolor for the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was put up for auction, fetching a staggering $1.9 million. It was estimated at between $400,000 to $600,000, marking the highest pre-sale estimate ever placed on an item of any Harry Potter-related work. The illustration was chased by four bidders on the phone and online for nearly ten minutes before selling to applause.
At just 23-years old, Taylor’s first professional commission as a budding illustrator was to create a work for an unpublished novel about a then-unknown character, Harry Potter.
Thomas Taylor illustration. Photo: Courtesy Sotheby's
His now universal image features a young Harry Potter depicted boarding the train to Hogwarts. He was reportedly paid $650 for the job at the time. Since then, 500 million copies have since been sold worldwide with translations in 80 languages.
Taylor’s drawing was first offered at auction in 2001 at Sotheby’s London with a presale estimate of between £20,000 – £25,000, at that time, the highest estimate for any Harry Potter-related material. It hammered down at a record-breaking £85,750. In 2021, an unsigned first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone sold for $421,000 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas.
The item was just one of the works in a sale of The Library of Dr. Rodney P. Swantko, a significant library of nineteenth- and twentieth-century English and American literature, including books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Edgar Allan Poe, among others.
Cover: Thomas Taylor illustration.
Photo: Courtesy of Sothebys
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