Prices for Animation Artworks Still High, but Few Records Set

Mirroring the trend in fine-art sales, prices for artwork from animated films remained high, but set few records at a Sunday auction at Christie’s East in New York. Of the 358 lots offered, 273 were sold, for a sale total of nearly $1.6 million.

Cel and background setups from the black-and-white Mickey Mouse shorts of the 1930s continued to command the highest prices. A 7 1/2-by-9 1/2-inch cel and background of Mickey and Minnie in medieval costumes from Walt Disney’s “Ye Olden Days” (1933) brought $176,000, the highest price in the sale. A slightly larger setup of Mickey as Uncle Tom and Horace Horsecollar as Simon Legree from “Mickey’s Mellerdrammer” (1933) sold for $104,500.

Although high, these prices are well below the $286,000 paid for a cel and background from Disney’s “The Orphans’ Benefit” in May. Two color cel and background setups of Mickey in the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence of “Fantasia” (1940) sold for $71,500 apiece, well above the pre-sale estimates of $15,000 to $25,000.

Prices rose substantially in the area of pre-production artwork--drawings and paintings that are done before the animation to set the visual style and mood of the film. A set of six watercolor concept drawings from Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937) brought $35,200, more than 10 times the pre-sale estimate of $3,000 to $5,000, while four preliminary studies for “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” brought $26,400.

Buyers also paid higher prices for publicity artwork, drawings made by studio artists for advertisements. A pen-and-ink drawing for the 1936 short “Mickey’s Polo Team,” featuring caricatures of Walt Disney, Harpo Marx, Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, sold for $13,200, a record for a publicity drawing. A drawing of Mickey, Donald Duck and Clara Cluck advertising “The Orphan’s Benefit” (1936) brought $6,380; the pre-sale estimates for the drawings were only $1,000 to $1,500 apiece.

“Most of the buyers who pay top prices for animation artwork still come from a small group that includes major Hollywood figures and an anonymous Canadian collector,” said Joshua Arfer, director of animation art at Christie’s. “But the market is rapidly expanding: There were an extraordinary number of new American buyers at this sale, and we’ve started to break into the international market. Collectors from the Orient and Europe have also begun to purchase animation art, although they’re not yet as strong a presence as they are at our sales of Contemporary and Impressionist works.”

The focus of the animation art market now shifts to the West Coast: For the first time in more than a decade, a major auction of artwork from animated films will be held in Southern California on Dec. 4, when dealer Howard Lowrey plans to offer 239 lots, most of them from Disney films, at the Burbank Hilton.