

20 Rare Pieces of Animation Art You Can Buy at Auction This Week

For the past year, media outlets have been reporting that the animation art market is making a comeback, marking a turnaround from a decade of depressed prices. With the year drawing to a close, we can now confirm that the reports are true, and 2013 will go down as a banner year for animation art.
The market continued to pick up steam throughout the year. Auction house Heritage hosted its first-ever auction devoted solely to animation art last February, and followed with a second auction last month that netted $1.3+ million. Profiles in History, which has been doing animation-specific auctions since 2011, ran an animation auction last July, and their second auction this year will take place later this week. Other major auction houses like Bonhams are also testing the waters with animation art, and animation art conserver S/R Laboratories had an auction of its own last October. Meanwhile, veteran animation art dealer Howard Lowery hosts near-weekly online auctions on his website. (Disclosure: Bonhams, Heritage and Profiles in History are Cartoon Brew sponsors.)
What is remarkable about this surge in animation art sales is the sheer amount of quality work that has become available. Every auction I’ve seen this year has had appealing and rare items in it. The consistently high quality can be attributed to a variety of factors. For starters, many collectors had been holding on to their best pieces for years waiting for a good opportunity to put them back onto the market. Secondly, many Golden Age animation artists have passed away in the past decade, and the families of those artists are consigning personal collections that have never been available before. The bottomline is that it’s a really exciting time if you collect animation art. I’m not much of a collector myself, but even I haven’t been able to resist picking up a few pieces this year, and I might add, at affordable prices, too.
The upcoming Profiles in History animation auction will take place this Friday, December 20. To view the artwork, bid online, or register for the live-action, visit their website. Below is a gallery of just a few of the nearly 600 pieces that will go on the auction block this week:
- 1924 publicity photo of Dinky Doodle with Walter Lantz and original artwork.
- Production drawing by Ub Iwerks from the 1928 Mickey Mouse short Plane Crazy.
- Model drawing from the 1935 MGM short The Chinese Nightingale.
- Production background from a 1940s Columbia Screen Gems short.
- Production layout drawing from Tex Avery’s Dumb-Hounded..
- Background concept painting from Pinocchio.
- Concept drawing from Fantasia by Sylvia Holland.
- Concept painting for live-action sequences of Song of the South.
- Pastel concept art from Melody Time’s “Once Upon a Wintertime” sequence.
- Mary Blair concept painting of the “Indian Village” from Peter Pan.
- Concept painting from Working for Peanuts by Eyvind Earle.
- Production cel and background from the 1954 3-D Casper short Boo Moon.
- Color keys from Pigs is Pigs by Eyvind Earle.
- Production cel and background from animated sequence of the 1956 MGM feature Invitation to the Dance.
- Concept painting from Sleeping Beauty by Eyvind Earle.
- Pan production background from a 1960s Speedy Gonzales theatrical short.
- Production cel and background from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
- Production cel of the Vultures from The Jungle Book.
- Presentation art for Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards.
- Production storyboard drawing from Disney’s The Black Cauldron.