Preparatory drawings of The Little Prince will go up for auction on June 14

A suite of eleven preparatory drawings for The Little Prince, two watercolors for the final illustration of the first edition, as well as a couple of drawings and several autograph letters: these are the works and documents by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that will go up for auction next June 14 at the Artcurial house.

It is the lot of eleven drawings that is probably the most interesting: the story of these works was exclusively told yesterday in the French newspaper Le Figaro. The aviator and writer conceived them in 1942 during his stay in New York, and entrusted them to his friend Sylvia Hamilton before leaving for Europe where he would continue missions for the French Air Force (he would disappear during one of these missions). The friend gave them up in 1976: they have now come to the auction house from a collector in Toulouse. The watercolors, on the other hand, once belonged to the writer’s wife, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, who sold them in 1985. The estimate is between 80 and 100,000 euros for the suite of drawings, while the two watercolors are valued one between 110 and 140,000 euros, the other between 92 and 110,000 euros.

“I think,” Artcurial’s book and manuscript expert Guillaume Romaneix told Le Figaro, “that these drawings will allow us to discover aspects of the Little Prince that we didn’t know about yet.” The suite and watercolors are described as “exceptional” on the auction house’s website. Near nine drawings, moreover, the writer had included a commentary sentence to better place the illustration in the context of the book. This is the only group of preparatory drawings for The Little Prince still in private hands. So all that remains is to wait for the auction to find out what will become of Saint-Exupéry’s works.

Pictured: detail of one of the two watercolors for the illustration of The Little Prince (1942; black ink and ochre, brown and red watercolor, with black pencil strokes, on sheet of paper glued on cardboard, 27.8 x 21.4 cm), from the Artcurial website.

Preparatory drawings of The Little Prince will go up for auction on June 14

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