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Newsletter January 2025

Christie's Science Fiction and Fantasy Auction

It was a pleasure to see some of John Harris's very early work in a museum setting in December at the Christie's London sale. I hadn't seen those pieces for a long time, in fact since they were sold in the 1980's. This triptych was sold by the grand-daughter of Sir Clive Sinclair. It had been hanging in Clive's house in Cambridge until quite recently.
And these two early covers for Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead looked great hanging alongside Chris Foss's work, and others. They were sold by an early collector of John's work and nothing could have prepared us for the excellent prices they made, irrelevant though that is to us.
The reason we didn't have any paintings of John's of our own to put into the sale is that they've all been sold already! Thanks to all those people who have collected his work during the past few decades, the cupboard was bare.

Quite by coincidence though, John had visited me just before the sale with some very early sketches. Until then, he hadn't wanted to part with them because they represent those first thoughts which sprung from years of meditation, and with which he first approached Young Artists, as the agency was then known.

We used many of them in the first book of his work, 'MASS', which is now hard to find. The book was commissioned by Philip Dunn of Pierrot Publishing but Philip's career took a weird turn before the book could be published so it wasn't until Hubert Schaafsma of Paper Tiger picked it up that it saw the light of day. And that was in 2000. By that time, John had produced many book cover paintings, and the one on the cover of MASS was used on a Best of Trek cover.
We've started putting those early sketches on the website as well as more recent work from an overlooked drawer in John's plan chest. Most are in charcoal but by the time MASS was published some had been realised as paintings for book covers so we;ve included those where we can, or a photo of the book to show how it appeared. This was the first study for the title page.
Long Legs study
This one became the cover for The Currents of Space by Isaac Asimov.
This one which we called Astropolis was used on a Best of Trek cover.
The most classic of all is the original sketch for Quiet Night which came to define John for many years to come. He painted it twice and both paintings have been sold but the signed prints are magnificent. This is the very first drawing as it came to him in 1978 when standing on the Dartmoor Hills above the city of Exeter on a bright moonlit night. You could say that this is the one that launched his career so the person who buys this drawing will be buying a piece of history.
We're all grateful to Christie’s for putting Science Fiction painting and artefacts into a pre-Christmas highlight. It was a very successful sale so perhaps they'll do that again.

In other news


The auction brought me back to Chris Foss who also sold his work successfully. And the news that with the sale of his house coming up, he'd like to sell the massive drawing board on which he's produced many, many covers and a lot more over the past few decades. It's likely to weigh a ton but if anyone is interested, just let me know so I can put you in touch with Chris. It's in Dorset, England.
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