Illustration Art

The Wall Street journal just ran an interesting article on the growing interest of illustration art by artists such as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish and N.C. Wyeth.  The article mentions the growth in sales of illustration art at Heritage from about $4 million per year in 2008 to averaging over $10 million the past two years.

The Wall Street Journal reports

It's called illustration art. The public is mainly familiar with its high end— painters such as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish and N.C. Wyeth. These painters earned their living as illustrators and commercial artists, but in recent years their work has been taken more seriously by the art world—and by collectors who are bidding up record prices. "Breaking Home Ties," a 1954 painting by Rockwell, who made his name creating covers of the Saturday Evening Post, sold for $15.4 million at a Sotheby's BID -0.05% auction in 2006. The same year, "Daybreak," a 1922 oil-on-board painting by Parrish, an illustrator of books, magazines and advertisements in the early 20th century, also set a record price for his work, bringing $7.6 million in an auction at Christie's.

Not all illustration art is as well-known—or as pricey. Judy Cutler, owner of New York's American Illustrators Gallery, says the pastels and watercolors of children's book illustrator Mary Jane Begin (now at the Rhode Island School of Design) go for $500 to $20,000. And works by former Boston Globe editorial cartoonist Paul Szep, she says, range from $500 to $2,500.

'Golden Age'
Todd Hignite, who heads illustration-art sales at Dallas-based Heritage Auctioneers & Galleries Inc., says his gallery's sales of illustration art have averaged just over $10 million in the past two years, up from $4.4 million in 2008. Along the way, Heritage has set auction records for a number of illustrators, including Howard Chandler Christy ($179,250 for his 1946 oil "Nymphs in Summer"), Maurice Sendak ($74,690 for a watercolor backdrop landscape for his book "Where the Wild Things Are") and Garth Williams ($155,350 for his cover art to E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web").

Source: The Wall Street Journal