Record-Breaking Sale for Harry Potter Cover Art: $1.9 Million

A watercolour illustration created for the cover of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone" has set a new auction record. This iconic piece, painted by Thomas Taylor for the debut book of J.K. Rowling's series, was sold for an impressive $1.9 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Wednesday, June 26.

Sotheby’s described it as "the most valuable Harry Potter item ever sold at auction." Previously, the record was held by a first edition copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone," which sold for $421,000 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas in December 2021.

The 1997 illustration, which depicts Harry standing in front of the train to Hogwarts, sparked a bidding war among four buyers that lasted nearly 10 minutes. Sotheby’s had initially estimated the artwork to sell for between $400,000 and $600,000, the highest pre-sale estimate ever for a Harry Potter-related item.

This watercolour artwork was first auctioned in 2001 at Sotheby’s London when only the first four books of the series had been published. Back then, it was expected to sell for £20,000 to £25,000 but ended up fetching £85,750.

Thomas Taylor, who later authored the children’s series "Eerie-on-Sea," was just 23 years old when he received his first professional commission to illustrate Harry Potter. Barry Cunningham, the publisher at Bloomsbury, asked Taylor to create the character's image. Using concentrated watercolours on cold-pressed watercolour paper and black Karisma pencil for the outlines, Taylor completed the illustration in two days. He was among the first to read the manuscript.

The final auction price included the buyer’s premium.