Auction News - Graham Gallery Cat

 

Doyle auction house in New York City offered an exceptional pen, ink & watercolor piece of original artwork by Edward Gorey. The colorful 3.5" x 4" image (paper size 8" x 10") features one of Mr. Gorey's signature cats acting like a small child...or an interior decorator. The drawing had a pre-sale estimate of $2000 - $4000 and sold for $9450.00 (including buyer's premium).

This beautifully rendered piece makes superb use of the white space, giving the image a sense of time passing as the industrious cat patiently draws the wallpaper design freestyle. In a sense, this piece could be considered a self portrait of Edward Gorey at his drawing table, endlessly adding detail to his intricate works of art.

This piece was originally created for Edward Gorey's 1974 fine art exhibition at The Graham Gallery and was still in its original gallery framing with the label on the reverse. Mr. Gorey created 46 unique pieces of art for the show and this was piece #33. The art created for the show had several different thematic threads: cats, children, fantastic animals, people doing sports, and china designs. The 15 cat themed pieces from the show are all siblings to the 50 drawings created for the deluxe limited edition of Amphigorey (later presented in book form as Categor y).

To see the other pieces from the 1974 Graham show, see my post: https://goreyana.blogspot.com/2014/02/edward-goreys-1974-graham-gallery.html