Bloomsbury Auctions announces Capture the Imagination: Original Illustration & Fine Illustrated Books (click for the catalog), its annual holiday sale of original illustrations and fine illustrated books. The auction takes place on Wednesday, December 9, at 2 p.m., at 6 West 48th Street in New York City. It will showcase important works from the Golden Age of Illustration to the present day.
According to children’s book historian Michael Patrick Hearne, who helped catalog the collection, the sale is unique for its first-ever offering of the estate of African-American artist Tom Feelings, best known for “The Middle Passage” (1996).
Additional highlights includes a drawing for a book cover by Aubrey Beardsley, John R. Neill’s painting of Cap’n Bill as a merman from L. Frank Baum’s The Sea Fairies, Willy Pogány’s watercolor for A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, and Gustaf Tenggren’s early illustration of trolls.
There are also gems from Caldecott Medal winners Arnold Lobel, Uri Shulevitz, Beni Montresor, Evaline Ness, Richard Egielski, Paul Zelinsky, Trina Schart Hyman, and Leonard Weisgard. And more: Maurice Sendak’s original designs for the Wild Things Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon (below middle). Watercolors by William Steig for the original Shrek! (below bottom), Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, and more will be sold to benefit The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.
In the unlikely event that none of those spark interest, the auction also includes drawings and other work by Edward Ardizonne, Umberto Brunelleschi, Edward Gorey, Tomi Ungerer, Al Hirschfeld, H. A. Rey, James Marshall, Barry Moser, The Dillons (below top), Jerry Pinkney, Charles Santore, Charles M. Schultz, and Walt Disney–not to mention Andy Warhol, for his 1957 The Little Red Hen (above).