Original works by Patrick Nagel and Robert McGinnis achieved world record prices at Heritage Auctions last week, as part of a $1 million+ sale of pin-up and illustration art.
Nagel’s painting ‘Bold’ sold for an impressive $200,000 against a high estimate of $80,000, easily surpassing the previous record of $161,000 set at Heritage back in 2014.
Patrick Nagel achieved fame during the late 1970s with his work for Playboy magazine, and his ‘Nagel women’ portraits came to define the pin-up genre in the 1980s.
He also created album covers for the likes of Duran Duran, before sadly passing away in 1984 at the age of just 38.
During his short career, Nagel only created a small number of works on stretched canvases during a three-year period – and it’s this rarity which surely accounted for the new record price set by ‘Bold’.
Throughout his career McGinnis has produced the covers for more than 1,200 paperback books, along with creating classic posters for the movies Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Barbarella and several James Bond films.
The work offered at Heritage was McGinnis’ artwork for the 2002 DVD release of Casino Royale, the James Bond parody starring Peter Sellers, David Niven and Woody Allen.
Drawn in a similar style to his iconic James Bond illustrations, the work more than trebled its estimate of $15,000 to fetch $47,500.
There were also notable results for the likes of Hugh Joseph Ward, whose 1942 original cover art for Private Detective magazine ‘Undercover Man’ sold for $81,250; Gil Elvgren, whose 1946 pin-up calendar illustration ‘We Had a Little Falling Out’ sold for $30,000; and Chesley Bonestell, whose 1948 Collier’s Magazine illustration depicting the ‘Atomic Bombing of New York’ sold for $27,500.
“This auction was rich with fresh-to-market quality material and collectors took advantage of the opportunity,” said Ed Jaster, Senior Vice President at Heritage Auctions.
“We remain the No. 1 house for hard-to-source artworks from the peak of popular culture.”
