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 auctions 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