The watercolor was painted in 1996 by a recent art school graduate from Britain who was working at a bookstore. He was paid $650.
The original cover art for the first edition of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” sold for $1.92 million at auction on Wednesday, becoming the most expensive item related to the series, decades after its illustrator was paid a commission of just $650.
The watercolor painting, which depicts the young wizard Harry going to Hogwarts from Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross station, was part of the private library of an American book collector and surgeon, Dr. Rodney P. Swantko, whose other rare items were auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York this week.
The year before the novel came out in 1997, its publisher, Bloomsbury, hired a 23-year-old from England who had just graduated from art school to design the book jacket, the auction house said. The artist, Thomas Taylor, would go on to establish the world’s conception of Harry Potter, with his iconic round glasses and lightning bolt scar.
“It’s kind of staggering, really,” he said about the sale of his painting in an interview on Thursday. “It’s exciting to see it fought over.”
Mr. Taylor was working at a children’s bookstore when he submitted sample drawings of wizards and dragons for the publisher in London to review, he said in a 2022 podcast interview. When he was selected, he said, “I was over the moon.”
The cover was Mr. Taylor’s first professional assignment. And, at the time, “J.K. Rowling was as unknown as I was,” he wrote in his blog, referring to the novel’s British author.
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