Illustration Art

Since its first dedicated sale in 2013, the Illustration Art department has celebrated the artistic achievements of illustrators from the last two centuries. The department handles original works of narrative art created for books and magazines, advertisements, set and costume designs for theater, dance, and film, fashion drawings, graphic novels, and comics & cartoons.

These popular auctions regularly feature iconic children's and picture book illustrators such as Ludwig Bemelmans, Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle, Edmund Dulac, Maurice Sendak, and Arthur Rackham. Masters of the Brandywine School and Golden Age illustration have included N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Maxfield Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, Jessie Willcox Smith, and Kate Greenaway. Recent record prices for masters of book and magazine illustration for publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, LIFE and Vogue include Joseph Kernan, Edmund Dulac, Edward Gorey, Ruth Eastman, Ilonka Karasz, and Neysa McMein.

Notable highlights include The Snow Queen by Edmund Dulac, 1910, which reached $125,000; Joseph F. Kernan’s College Football, published as the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1932, realized $75,000; Manhattan Mary from the studio of William Oden Waller for $77,500, and Ludwig Bemelmans’s And here we're back - all twelve no less - Happy New Year and Togetherness! for $75,000.

Additionally, we have offered a wide range of single-owner collections, including the Collection of Jules Feiffer, original illustrations and rare printed posters and graphics from the collection of Richard “Dick” McDonough, and The Edward Gorey Collection of Samuel Speigel.