Bonhams’ December Auction Results Featuring Some Tom Jung Gems…
In December, continuing their long-standing collaboration, Bonhams Auctioneers and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) held their “TCM Presents … 1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year” auction.
Among the standout lots were a wand used by Glinda the Good Witch in “The Wizard of Oz” (sold for £305,374 / $400,075) and a pair of screen-worn Darth Vader gloves from the original “Star Wars” (sold for £36,313 / $47,575).
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Images owned by Bonhams
But, in this unusually named auction (a large percentage of the lots had nothing to do with 1939), there were a few stand out pieces for the movie poster enthusiast and they all came from the personal collection of movie poster legend Tom Jung.
We will run a feature post on Tom Jung’s work later in the year. In the meantime, these five lots give a fantastic insight in to his amazing artistic talents.
Tom Jung original concept artwork for the “Le Mans” one sheet poster
Lee Katzin and John Sturges' fictional 1971 racing film starred Steve McQueen as driver Michael Delaney. Filmed on location during the Le Mans 24 hour race of 1970, the movie had been a labour of love for McQueen.
The iconic movie poster, showing McQueen saluting the Le Mans crowd, is sought after by collectors.
These pencil and acrylic pieces carried an auction estimate of £3100 - £4600 ($4000 - $6000), but surprisingly went unsold. With the recent success of “Ford v Ferrari” / “Le Mans ‘66”, we would have expected there to have been great interest in this piece. Perhaps it went unnoticed in an auction that appeared to be focussed on 1939.
Tom Jung original concept artwork for the “Papillon” one sheet poster
Based on the autobiographical novel by French convict Henri Charriere, Franklin J. Schaffner's 1973 movie has astonishing performances by Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman
This beautiful acrylic piece was estimated at £4600 - £6100 ($6000 - $8000) and again went unsold. A real travesty for an astonishing piece of art that captures these two phenomenal actors (and characters) superbly. (Any readers that are interested may want to contact Bonham’s to make an after-auction offer.)
Tom Jung original concept artwork for “The Lord of the Rings” one sheet poster
Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated film employed an innovative 'rotoscoping' technique to create "the first movie painting". Now a cult classic, Peter Jackson has acknowledged it as an influence on his own Tolkien movies. The movie poster for Bakshi's masterpiece is as beautiful as the film itself.
This amazing acrylic on artboard work sold for £21,047 ($27,575), including buyer’s premiums.
Tom Jung original concept artwork for the “Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope” half sheet poster with additional sketches
Of all the posters for the original Star Wars, the rarer half sheet is one of our favourites and it is amazing to see the original pencil sketch for the poster, complete with coffee cup stain!
The entire composition of the poster can be seen, save for the two droids, which are bottom right in the final poster. It is known that the droids were added to Tom’s one sheet poster by another artist. Perhaps the same is true of the half sheet.
This lot was estimated at £19000 - £23000 ($25000 - $30000), but astonishingly, went unsold. (If only we had £20000 lying around!)
Tom Jung original concept artwork for the “Star Wars: Episode IV–A New Hope” one sheet poster
Do Star Wars movie poster trophies come any bigger than this? The original acrylic, pencil and airbrush artwork for the Style A one sheet poster (again minus the droids).
Image owned by Bonhams
Jung was famously given a few on-set photographs, an overview of the plot and a ‘good versus evil’ theme. His artwork features our heroes in white, with a light-sabre cross set against the dark of evil Vader.
Unsurprisingly, this iconic piece did sell, for £47,763 ($62,575). In our opinion, that will prove to be a very shrewd purchase.
Fans of Tom’s work can see which Tom Jung movie posters we have available here.
We are off to look down the back of the sofa. You never know, perhaps there is twenty grand lying around somewhere…
Adam and the Art of the Movies team.
