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Original illustration for the Rupert the Bear Annual 1961.

Children's Book Illustrations On sale at UK Fair

www.cooperevents.com

The £10,000 original cover artwork for a Rupert the Bear Annual from 1961 highlights a colourful display of illustrations going on sale at The Cotswolds Decorative Antiques & Fine Art Fair at Westonbirt School, near Tetbury, Gloucestershire from 27th - 29th March 2015. The painting forms part of a collection going on display at this popular spring event. This and others will be familiar to anyone who once enjoyed the Rupert the Bear annuals and cartoon strips, stories of King Arthur, the Chronicles of Narnia, The Jungle Book, The Wind in the Willows, The Golden Compass and The Little Mermaid. ‘People love the nostalgia of childhood and these illustrations always bring back memories,’ explains Mike Emeny from ‘Art of the Imagination’, art dealers from Salisbury. Particularly eye-catching will be the original cover artwork for the Rupert Annual 1961, by the artist Alfred Bestall. Painted in watercolours and ink, it is on sale for £10,000 and is likely to be a very good investment. The prices for original drawings of Winnie the Pooh are now valued at tens of thousands of pounds when less than a decade ago a pen and ink drawing could be bought for a few hundred pounds. Another Rupert illustration, this a pen and ink drawing by Mary Tourtel for ‘Rupert and the Little Prince’, published in 1930, signed by the artist, is priced at £1,450. Also eye-catching will be a rare work by the highly collected artist Arthur Rackham. This original coloured illustration for Legends of King Arthur, this signed work dates from 1902 and is on sale for £14,000. More affordable will be a number of original prints at £165 each of an illustration for Wind in the Willows by the contemporary artist Angel Dominguez. The original painting for this print will also be on sale - shown here with Mike Emeny. ‘The Cotswolds Decorative Antiques & Fine Art Fair is always one of our most popular events of the spring’, explains organiser Sue Ede of Cooper Events, who has been running the fair for more than ten years. ‘The fair offers a wide variety of interesting and desirable pieces for collectors, home furnishers, interior designers and anyone looking for unusual decorative pieces.’

Westonbirt House
Westonbirt School
Westonbirt
Tetbury, United Kingdom