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A postcard picturing Tintin and his dog Snowy. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Alain & Evelyne, Morel de Westgaver.

Rare Tintin drawing fetches $1.23 million at auction

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf
A postcard picturing Tintin and his dog Snowy. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Alain & Evelyne, Morel de Westgaver.
A postcard picturing Tintin and his dog Snowy. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com archive

Hong Kong (AFP) – A rare drawing of comic book hero Tintin by Belgian cartoonist Herge fetched over $1 million at auction in Hong Kong Monday as experts say comic art is becoming as collectible as paintings.

The artwork is an illustration from the cartoonist’s The Blue Lotus book, published in 1936, which sees Tintin and sidekick Snowy the dog on an adventure in Shanghai.

An Asian collector reportedly paid HK$9.6 million ($1.2 million).

Drawn in monochrome, it shows Tintin being pulled along a street in a rickshaw with a policeman looking on.

The drawing is the only original from the book to remain in private hands with the rest in museums.

The Blue Lotus is considered by specialists as the masterpiece album of Herge.

The piece had been predicted to sell at between HK$8.6 million and HK$13 million.

The record for a Tintin piece was set by a 1937 comic strip sold at an auction in Paris in May for $3.4 million. It was bought by an American collector.

Despite a downturn in the Chinese economy which some fear will dent the region’s burgeoning art market, auction houses in Hong Kong say they are still optimistic that rare pieces will sell.