Rare Tintin painting sells in Paris for record €3.2 mln

A Paris auction house sold an original painting made for the 1936 Tintin comic book "The Blue Lotus." The small Herge artwork fetched more than €3 million.

Jean- Paul Casterman was seven years old when he received a piece of paper with a drawing on it. The child folded the small watercolor of a youngster and his dog hiding from a dragon in a gigantic Chinese vase and put it in a drawer, where it languished for decades.

The man who gave little JeanPaul the gift was none other than Georges Remi, better known as Herge. The boy's father, Louis Casterman, headed the publishing house that published the Belgian illustrator's worldfamous comics about the adventures of a young reporter called Tintin and his dog, Snowy.

The drawing was an early version for the cover of the 1936 The Blue Lotus. The editor rejected it, arguing that the multi-colored drawing was too expensive to print.

On Thursday, the 34 x 34 centimeter (13 x 13 inch) drawing went on sale at the Artcurial auction house in Paris — and fetched €3.2 million ($ 3.9 million).

Tintin and Snowy in China Herge was a perfectionist and a visionary — and the 1936 volume of the Tintinseries has a special place in Herge's artistic cosmos as it marks the illustrator's opening up to foreign cultures: in this case, to Chinese culture.

Herge studied the country's culture and history for The Blue Lotus to create a greater sense of realism, said Eric Leroy, a comics expert at the Artcurial auction house, based in Paris. "With stark colors, the eye contact between Tintin and the dragon captivates us," he told DW, adding that Tintin's faithful dog, Snowy, is also pictured. "Herge wanted us to feel the mysterious side of the story that is told in the framework of Chinese culture."

The Blue Lotus — groundbreaking work

This work is an iconic comic image, "one of the most famous of the 20th century," says Leroy.

It is the second time Artcurial is auctioning a work from the Tintin universe. Herge's cover for the 1932 Tintin in America went under the hammer in 2012 for €1.2 million ($1.5 million) — a record sum for a francophone comic artist at the time. Just a few years later, in the summer of 2020, a few other Herge comic album covers achieved top prices.

Herge's widow has meanwhile said her husband by no means meant to give away that precious painting — and would like the work returned to her.

However, "the sellers are the rightful owners of the work. They are the heirs of Jean-Paul Casterman," Leroy says, adding that the widow's claims of ownership are mere assertions that have no legal basis.

Record prices for comic art Original works by comics and fantasy artists have long fetched high prices at auctions; covers for fantasy magazines by artists such as Frank Frazetta have recently sold for several million dollars. In 2019, a Frazetta cover painting depicting an Egyptian queen changed hands for $5.4 million at a Chicago auction. "Buyer interest depends on the quality of the pieces. The market is strong, especially for increasingly rare copies," says comics expert Leroy.

Such elaborate works rarely find their way into museums, however. "The true home of 'The Blue Lotus' is the Musee Herge," the museum's director, Nick Rodwell, told French paper Le Monde. "But public collections can't keep up with those astronomical sums."

16, she danced as an understudy in a Black musical, followed in 1922 by appearances in a successful show called Chocolate Dandies that also toured to Moscow and St. Petersburg. The show was her ticket to Broadway, followed by Europe only a short while later.

Glamorous Paris

Wearing only a few feathers and a pearl necklace, she appeared in a cabaret program at the glamorous Theatre des Champs Elysees in Paris in 1925. Her sensual eroticism, toned body and her legendary Charleston dance swept audiences off their feet. People especially loved her "danse sauvage," in which she wore a short skirt made of 16 artificial bananas.

Next stop: The famous Folies Bergere vaudeville theater, followed by a Europe tour with the Revue Negre that took the exotic dancer to capitals across Europe.

A 'Black Venus' on stage

In an era of economic growth on a continent recovering from a devastating world war, Josephine Baker in Paris was very much a sex symbol, hyped as a "Black Venus." Admirers showered her with expensive gifts and vows of love. Unmoved, the diva had countless lovers, male and female. Crowds went wild where she showed up. In Munich, Germany, however, she was banned from performing due to the expected "violation of public decency."

A celebrated star in Europe, she faced racist hostility during a tour in the US — after her shows, she would have to leave the theaters via the service entrance.

In 1937, she married a French industrialist and became a French citizen.

Spy against the Nazis

The outbreak of World War II in 1939 and Nazi Germany's occupation of France fundamentally changed the life of Josephine Baker forever.

At first, she worked for the Red Cross and then became a spy for the French resistance movement. In her tour luggage, she smuggled letters and secret documents across the border. At the end of the war, General Charles De Gaulle, who would later become French president, awarded her the French Legion of Honor.

The 'rainbow family'

Josephine Baker and her husband lived at Les Milandes, a 15th-century castle in southwestern France. It became home for the 12 children of completely different origins who she adopted over the years — her "rainbow family."

Baker herself toured constantly and was hardly ever at home. She left the rearing of her children to her husband and nannies. In 1963, she joined the legendary March on Washington, marching alongside Martin Luther King to protest racism in the US.

She led a luxurious life, yet in the end, Josephine Baker was heavily in debt. In May 1968, her estate was foreclosed. By then, her then-husband had long since left her. Her friend, Monaco's Princess Gracia Patricia, otherwise known as Grace Kelly, ensured that Baker's children would be provided for by the Red Cross in the small principality.

In 1973, Baker staged a comeback at New York's Carnegie Hall, and a legendary show two years later at the Bobino Theater in Paris garnered her headlines once again. But the aging diva could not live up to her earlier success. On April 12, 1975, she died of heart failure at the age of 68. Her role as an Allied spy and mother of 12 may not be as wellknown, but her fame as a dancer has outlived her to this day.