Lauritz.com in Herlev is pleased to present a special auction with the seven original cover illustrations for the Danish translations of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books.
See the illustrations and bid here
The illustrations are by Per Jørgensen. Several years ago, they were selected as the best in the world by a vote organized by an international Harry Potter fan site. The works are on auction and can be viewed at Lauritz.com in Herlev from Monday, 27 April to Monday, 11 May. In connection with the auction, a Harry Potter lecture has been arranged at Lauritz.com in Herlev on 30 April, 7 pm.
The Harry Potter illustrations have made Per Jørgensen famous, both in Denmark and worldwide, as an illustrator and as a visual interpreter of the magical universe surrounding Harry Potter and his friends at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
With his illustrations, Per Jørgensen has captured the mood in each individual book by putting the essence of the tale on the cover as a visual door to the story. He portrays Harry Potter as an ordinary boy with glasses, t-shirt and jeans. An ordinary boy who we all know and can identify with and who guides us through the books' magical, strange and fantastic universe where good and evil fight one another and where friendship, loyalty and courage are important qualities in the battle against evil.
Per Jørgensen often uses models for his figures. This makes the figures as alive and as realistic as possible and, in this way, he creates a natural bridge between reality and fantasy. For the first two books, Harry Potter is drawn according to Erik, a boy who is a relative of Per Jørgensen. On the cover of the sixth book, 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince', Per Jørgensen has also used his family and himself as models.
If you ask Per Jørgensen why he was given the assignment for the cover illustrations, he will answer, with a modest grin, that it was a combination of luck and coincidence. However, even though Per Jørgensen was not known to the broader public before the Harry Potter illustrations, he has been a professional illustrator since 1989 and a cover illustrator since 1993. He was already known and respected within the profession. Danish publisher Gyldendal knew very well Per Jørgensen's work and liked his illustrations. Therefore, it was natural for Gyldendal to ask Per Jørgensen to do the first cover illustration for Harry Potter. The rest is history. Over 1.6 million copies of the seven Harry Potter books have been sold in Denmark and over 350 million copies have been sold internationally.
With the great spread and popularity of the books, Per Jørgensen and his cover illustrations became well known and very popular. His illustrations were selected as the best in the world by a vote organized by an international Harry Potter fan site. When J. K. Rowling was interviewed by CBS current affairs programme '60 Minutes', a few years ago, she chose to show only the Danish illustrations.
The recognition has opened many new doors for Per Jørgensen. He is particularly fond of the opportunity this has given him to get children involved and engaged during his numerous speaking arrangements at schools and libraries. Here, he can talk at length about his passion for Harry Potter books and children's books in general, and the path into the world of dreams, magic and fantasy which is so important to both children and adults and for which books are a catalyst.
Per Jørgensen is one of the few illustrators in Denmark who draws and paints everything by hand. Thus, all the illustrations are small, unique master pieces. They are painted with a special technique using oil or acrylic on gesso ground paper. Gesso is a white, matt, ground paint that is applied to the paper in several layers before the subject is painted with oil and brush. Gesso ground prevents the oil from pulling out in the paper and ruining the paintings ability to fasten to the paper. Per Jørgensen is one of the very few illustrators working with oil on paper. This gives a very special and unique result where the paper's thin, smooth surface and oil's many possibilities for work with colour, shade and detail form a synthesis.
Questions about the auction and the lecture evening should be addressed to: valuation specialist Julie A. Voss. E-mail: julie.herlev@lauritz.com, tel.: +45 4450 9811.
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Lauritz.com Herlev