Illustration Art

Visual storytelling plays a powerful role in our lives and history. 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.

Because many of these works were not saved or exhibited when they were created, their scarcity and desirability make them highly collectible in today's marketplace.

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.

Dazzling and important performing arts-related works by Al Hirschfeld, Jo Mielziner, and Joe Eula, Erté and Georges Lepape have passed through our auction gallery.

Recent record prices for masters of book and magazine illustration for publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, LIFE and Vogue include Joseph Kernan, Edmund Dulac, Edward Gorey, and female artists Ruth Eastman, Ilonka Karasz, and Neysa McMein.

We achieve high prices for comics and cartoons by Charles Schulz, George Herriman , and Otto Messmer. One of our most popular sale sections, the cartoons and cover art from The New Yorker, regularly features such greats as Charles Addams, Peter Arno, Richard Taylor, Arthur Getz, James Thurber, Saul Steinberg, and funny ladies Barbara Shermund, Roz Chast, Mary Petty, and Helen Hokinson.