54 13th November 2010 international events
The further lucrative Adventures of Tintin…
■ Hergé’s hero leads the way in showing comics mean serious money in France and Belgium
Simon Hewitt reports £1 = €1.14
COMIC strips are big business for French auctioneers these
days. François Tajan was one of the first in
the field to recognise their commercial potential while he was still working for his father’s firm a decade ago. Now, at Artcurial, he continues lead the way setting increasingly high prices for Asterix, Hugo Pratt and Enki Bilial – but it is Tintin, the greatest comic hero of the French-speaking world (albeit one translated into over 50 languages, with nearly 250m albums sold worldwide) who leads the way. Tintin was the brainchild of Hergé
who was born Georges Remi in 1907, adopting the RG (pronounced Her-gé) signature (his initials reversed) in 1924. He first created Tintin five years later
for Le Petit Vingtième – the comic which published Tintin’s adventures until the Second World War. It was not until 1946 that Hergé launched a fully-fledged Tintin magazine. His 24th and final Tintin book, Tintin and Alph-Art (about the modern art market), was unfinished when he died in Brussels in 1983. Under Tajan, Artcurial have posted
record prices for Hergé drawings both coloured (€600,000 for his 1932 Tintin in America in ink and gouache in March 2008) and black-and-white (€300,000 for The Crab with the Golden Claws in ink and pencil in March 2009). Tajan has been joined in the comic-
strip field by such other Paris firms as Millon & Associés, Coutau-Bégarie – and now Piasa (27.51/24.27% buyer’s premium), who entered the fray this summer with a sale devoted exclusively to Tintin. The sale took place on May 29 at Drouot-Montaigne, its 230 lots forming a
Above: this original double-page original plate from Le Sceptre d’Ottokar (1939), in indian ink with blue wash and white gouache highlights, 16in x 2ft (40 x 60cm), soared to €246,000 (£215,800) at Artcurial on October 9.
Right: Tintin, Snowy & The Animals of Paradise (1967), a 9 x 7in (22 x 17cm) watercolour and indian ink sketch with dedication to journalist Danielle Dechamps and accompanying letter from Hergé dated 26 May 1967 – €14,000 (£12,280) at Piasa on October 10.
Left this Hergé-signed map of the Château de Moulinsart (Marlinspike Hall), with spoof Act of Sale (1976), took €5500 (£4825) at Piasa on October 10.
All Tintin and Hergé illustrations © Hergé – Moulinsart 2010
international aficionados, bringing a €300,000 (£263,000) hammer with around 80 per cent of lots finding takers. Top bid was €15,000 (£13,160) for a
“veritable treasure-trove of never-before- seen original plates, sketches, coloured drawings, colourings from early Tintin albums, rare old objects and unpublished documents.” Underlining the sale’s documentary
credentials was the chance to acquire the type-written minutes of three years of Tintin magazine’s weekly editorial meetings from the 1950s. The “trove” generated £850,000,
led by €197,000 (£171,000) for a double-page plate from the Tintin book King Ottokar’s Sceptre in indian ink, watercolour and white gouache. Piasa staged the sale in partnership
with Moulinsart S.A., holders of the exclusive rights to Hergé’s work, in conjunction with Studios Hergé, a Brussels-based association founded in 2006 by Fanny Rodwell, Hergé’s sole legatee, to “protect and promote” Hergé’s oeuvre. Hergé’s saleroom appeal was
boosted in 2009 by the opening of an Hergé Museum in Louvain-la-Neuve, 20 miles south-east of Brussels. And Moulinsart and Studios Hergé seem happy to cash in on Tintin’s burgeoning commercial potential (even charging Piasa reproduction rights for Press images!). The duo staged an inaugural Hergé
sale during the 2009 Tintin Festival in Namur (southern Belgium), with local auctioneers Rops holding the gavel. The move to France, engineered by
Piasa’s Belgian representative Michel Wittamer, reflected the organisers’ desire for a more international stage. Keen to build on their summer
momentum, Piasa lost no time in planning a second Tintin sale for October 10 – not this time in Paris, but in a setting which the ranks of Tintinophiles view as a mecca: the Château of Cheverny in the Loire Valley, which Hergé took as his model for Captain Haddock’s Marlinspike Hall (Château de Moulinsart in the original). Château owner Charles-Antoine
de Vibraye unashamedly cashes in on this stroke of comic fortune by hosting a permanent Secrets de Moulinsart exhibition, which attracts thousands of paying visitors each year. The October sale was the climax to a
new ‘Tintin Festival’ complete with brass band, an exhibition of Tintin vehicles, flights in light aircraft over the Cheverny estate, and lectures by Dominique Maricq of Studios Hergé and Marcel Wilmet from the Hergé Museum. The 400-lot auction played to a packed saleroom of French and
copy of Tintin au Tibet (1960), from the initial print run of just 100, signed by Hergé and numbered 28/100. A copy of L’Oreille Cassée (The Broken
Ear), published by Casterman in 1937 and identical to the first edition of 1935 but for different-coloured fly-leaves, reached €13,000 (£11,400). One of the 500 copies of the 1939
first edition of Le Sceptre d’Ottokar (King Ottokar’s Sceptre), somewhat worn but with a handwritten Hergé dedication, took €6200 (£5440); a fresher-looking copy of the 1942 Grande Image (large image) edition of this Ruritanian tale, inspired by King Zog’s Albania, reached €6800 (£5965). A watercolour/ink drawing of Tintin,
Snowy & The Animals of Paradise, 9 x 7in (22 x 17cm), dedicated to journalist Danielle Dechamps, fetched €14,000 (£12,280). Pick of the Tintin “souvenir” items
were a €2450 (£2150) chess-set numbered 203/1000, complete with its black box and 32 chessmen modelled on Tintin characters, and, at €5200 (£4560), a 4ft 3in (1.3m) Tintin statue in coloured resin – one of 500 made by Leblon- Delienne, a Normandy firm specialising in resin figures of fictional characters, founded after Hergé’s death. Back in Paris, on October 9, the day
before Piasa’s Cheverny outing, Artcurial (25.12/22.16% buyer’s premium)
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