The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Peter Pan sculpture could fetch £30,000
Figure is a smaller version of the famous statue in Kensington Gardens
A rare bronze sculpture of children’s favourite Peter Pan is expected to fetch up to £30,000 at auction this week.
The figure is a smaller version of the Peter Pan statue which has attracted visitors to London’s Kensington Gardens since it appeared there overnight in 1912.
Author JM Barrie himself commissioned the work by renowned sculptor Sir George Frampton.
Valued at between £20,000 and £30,000, the figure cast in 1920 will be sold at Lyon and Turnbull in Edinburgh on Wednesday.
The anonymous seller said: “We are sorry to part with this beautiful statue – it has been in my family for nearly 100 years.
“We hope that it will be as loved by its new owners as much as it was by us.”
Barrie first used Peter Pan as a character in The Little White Bird (1902) and returned to him in a later stage play before expanding the story to produce the 1911 novel Peter and Wendy.
The original statue appeared in public with an announcement in The Times newspaper which read: “There is a surprise in store for the children who go to Kensington Gardens to feed the ducks in the Serpentine this morning ... a May-day gift by Mr JM Barrie, a figure of Peter Pan blowing his pipe on the stump of a tree, with fairies and mice and squirrels all around.
“It is the work of Sir George Frampton and the bronze figure of the boy who would never grow up is delightfully conceived.”
John Mackie, head of decorative arts at Lyon and Turnbull, said: “This famous statue is held in great affection all over the world – it is the iconic image of the boy who never grew up and a very beautiful work of art.”
We are sorry to part with this beautiful statue – it has been in my family for nearly 100 years. SELLER