Good Grief, Bart’s Art! : TV Cels Fetch More Than Mere Peanuts

Charlie Brown and Bart Simpson turned up in the chips this week, as sales of more than $2 million at two auctions in New York suggested that the sluggish market for top-of-the-line animation artwork has begun to rebound. Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s East held major sales, but for the first time most of the attention was focused on artwork from contemporary television shows.

On Tuesday at Sotheby’s, two multi-cel and background setups from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965), the first special based on Charles Schulz’s comic strip “Peanuts,” were sold by the Bill Melendez Studio for $34,100 and $27,500. Both pieces had pre-sale estimates of only $4,000 to $6,000.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. sold 28 cel and background setups from the hit series “The Simpsons” for $117,920 at Christie’s Thursday night.

New York restaurateur and “Simpsons” fan Antonio Francesco paid $24,200--more than 20 times the pre-sale estimate of $700 to $900--for a special presentation cel of Bart offering his baby sister, Maggie, for sale. (Proceeds from the sale of this cel will be donated to AIDS Project Los Angeles.)

“The sale of ‘The Simpsons’ material did extremely well, in what is a rather new field of collecting--contemporary animation art,” said Joshua Arfer, assistant vice president, animation and collectibles, for Christie’s. “All the pieces sold and all but one exceeded their high estimates, in some cases dramatically.”

Although media attention had been focused on the material from “The Simpsons” and the “Peanuts” specials, vintage Disney artwork continued to command the highest prices. The top-selling item at either auction was a cel and background of Cinderella admiring her ball gown in a fountain from the 1950 film, in a matte autographed by Walt Disney, which sold for $88,000--nearly four times its pre-sale estimate of $20,000 to $25,000, at Christie’s to an American buyer identified only as “a figure in the entertainment industry.”

Prices remained lower at Sotheby’s, where a multi-cel setup of Cinderella combing her hair, attended by two blue birds--also in a matte signed by Walt Disney--fetched $36,300, more than four times its preliminary estimate of $7,000 to $9,000.

At Christie’s, 267 of the 329 lots offered were sold, for a sale total of $1,304,336, while 240 of 309 lots sold at Sotheby’s for $835,725.