Animation Art Auction Fails to Set Records

Prices remained high but failed to break records Monday night at the first public auction of artwork from animated films held in Southern California in over a decade. More than 400 people crowded into a conference room at the Burbank Hilton to bid on cels, backgrounds, drawings and preliminary artwork, nearly all of it from Disney cartoon features and shorts.

Of the 235 lots offered by animation art dealer Howard Lowery, 233 found buyers, for a sale total of more than $320,000. The sale continued the trend toward steady, modest prices set at Christie’s East in New York last month, and suggests that the market for animation art is stabilizing after several years of skyrocketing prices.

A cel and background of Captain Hook, Mr. Smee and Peter Pan aboard the captain’s pirate ship from Walt Disney’s 1953 feature went to an unidentified telephone buyer for $22,550, the highest price in the sale. The same collector spent more than $62,000, paying $23,100 for cel and background set-ups of Br’er Rabbit from “Song of the South” (1946) and the Seven Dwarfs from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937), plus an additional $14,600 for two preliminary paintings for “Snow White” and the Oscar-winning short “The Old Mill” (1937).

The sale did not offer any of the black-and-white cel and background setups from early Mickey Mouse shorts that command six-figure prices. (A setup from “The Orphan’s Benefit” brought a record-breaking $286,000 at Christie’s in May.)