Ed Jaster to the Half-Million-Dollar an Avid Collector of Pulp Paintings and Comic Art Mark
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CONVERSATIONWITH Ed Jaster to the half-million-dollar An avid collector of pulp paintings and comic art mark. I think that’s just a in his youth, Ed Jaster segued to dealing before matter of time. In the golden age illustration, I really joining Heritage Auctions in 2002. There he has love the work of some of the witnessed explosive growth in illustration art— high-second-tier people, like J.C. Leyendecker and works that helped define pop culture as magazine Jessie Willcox Smith in covers, book covers, and movie posters. He spoke particular. Leyendecker, with Eric Bryant about the latest records and who did 322 Saturday Evening Post covers, was the popularity of pinup art in the Deep South. as good a painter as ever lived. His auction record is in the $200,000 range, but How long has Heritage been sold for $9 million a few years And Gil Elvgren is the leader some paintings have sold for involved in illustration art? later, and Breaking Home Ties in that category? a million privately. Smith’s In 2003 one of our competi- brought $15 million the same Our record for Elvgren is record is about $400,000, tors had a large collection of year. Mary Cassatt’s auction $286,800. We’ve sold over and we have the best one illustration art, and I knew it record is around $5 million. 25 Elvgrens at $100,000 or I’ve ever seen coming up in was from Charles Martignette, So the top, top illustrators more, and we’ve sold 75 the October 13 sale. based on my days competing have become a part of the for $50,000 or more. One of with him as a collector. So I American paintings canon. At the other categories I work in called up Charles—maybe the Heritage we take a little dif- is American paintings, and greatest collector in the field— ferent tack. We try to keep the those kinds of sales numbers and he gave us a million-dollar illustration art together. compare favorably to all but 63 consignment. It helped launch the top 5 percent of artists the whole fine-art department. So even with the growth you who go through auction. see it as one unified field? Another thing with Elvgren: How has the field changed There are a lot of subcatego- 95 percent of his lots offered since then? ries. In the last year we’ve have sold, which is stagger- It’s a big market. When you say started splitting off two cata- ing. I mean, no artist that “illustration art,” you might logues, one for the pulp and comes to auction with as well say “American art” or pinup, kind of the more…pick regularity has that kind of “European art.” There are a your adjective: fun, salacious, sell-through rate. The few areas where the market is hard-boiled. So we have one appeal is broad. We have down from, say, 1990, but distinct category for that very successful husband/ most of the market is great. and then another distinct cat- wife collectors from the For pinup art it has exploded; alogue for the “golden age.” Deep South who are pil- for the top blue-chip illustra- In that we’re talking about lars of their community, tors it has certainly matured. magazine covers, magazine and they love this stuff. illustrations, the slick stuff: And a lot of Hollywood Who are those top names? Collier’s, Harper’s, Saturday people buy it. But also Certainly Norman Rockwell Evening Post. It’s an ill-fitting fine-art collectors, and Maxfield Parrish, as term, maybe. It’s not distinctly especially people who well as some of their peers by time period. There is have a sensibility who have been moved into Howard Terpning, who is alive toward Pop art. the traditional American and some time back switched painting catalogues for a lot from illustration to Western What might be of our competitors in the last paintings. We had his art for up-and-coming in 10 years. I think what really the poster for One Million the market? changed a lot of things was Years B.C. that brought us The Elvgren prices have when Rockwell’s Rosie the $77,000. Of course, that is the been stable for about Riveter, which was a Saturday ultimate Raquel Welch movie the last three or four Evening Post cover, sold for where she’s in the fur bikini, so years, and I’m waiting for almost $5 million in 2002, and with the new breakdown, it one or two of them to KRISTINE LARSEN then Homecoming Marine might fit in the pinup category. go to the next level, to go BLOUINARTINFO.COM | OCTOBER 2012 ART+AUCTION 10 AA_Conversation With.indd 63 9/5/12 11:19:44 AM.