A Tintin drawing by the Belgian artist Hergé sold for 3.175 million euros ($3.86 million) in Paris on Thursday, breaking the record for the most expensive comic book art in history. The painting, Le Lotus Bleu was created in 1936 by the Belgian illustrator, born Georges Remi, who was the author of the Tintin comic books.
The work in Chinese ink, gouache and watercolour was created as a cover for The Blue Lotus, the fifth volume of the adventures of Tintin, a young reporter. It features a red dragon on a black background by the frightened character’s face. However, it never made it to store shelves because it was deemed too expensive to to be mass produced because it featured too many colours. So Hergé painted another version with a black dragon and a blank red background, which became the cover. The rejected artwork was gifted to Jean-Paul Casterman, the seven-year-old son of his editor, Louis Casterman. It was folded in six and put in a drawer, where it stayed until 1981, when Jean-Paul asked Hergé to sign it.
“They had to do a four colour process printing, so an additional colour and (the publisher) thought that the comic albums were already expensive and reproducing this cover would increase the production costs,” Comics expert Eric Leroy at Art Curial auction house said in a statement. “It’s the most beautiful item that’s on the market in private hands.”
Hergé previously set the record for the most expensive pieces of comic book art with the front pages of Tintin comic books that also sold for €2.6 million, including auction fees.
“We set the previous record for the ‘Pages de Garde’ in 2014 ..It would be fair for this piece to break this record. Hergé had done only five comic covers using this technique of direct color so it’s very rare,” Leroy said.
In Blue Lotus, Tintin travels to China during the 1931 Japanese invasion with his dog, Snowy, to investigate and expose Japanese spy networks, drug-smuggling rings and other crimes.
