A New Record for Warhol and the Queen

On November 24, the Heffel auction house in Toronto curated a sale of Post War & Contemporary Art. Estimated at CAD $500,000-$600,000, Andy Warhol's 1985 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II from the Reigning Queens series was one the top lots of the offer. Sold for CAD $1,141,250 (approx. $850,210), the portrait became the highest-selling edition print by Warhol on the auction market.

A number of factors are responsible for the realization of this hammer price, both with the recent passing of Her Majesty and the fact that the copy of Warhol's portrait of the Queen auctioned at Heffel is a very special one.

Related: Her Majesty: 70 Years in Portraits

In 1985, Andy Warhol presented his latest series of silkscreen portraits of famous people in a series called Reigning Queens, for which he captured the only reigning queens in the world at the time: Ntfombi Twala of Swaziland, Beatrix of the Netherlands, Margrethe of Denmark and, of course, Elizabeth II, head of state of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Warhol chose to render the Queen's portrait published in 1977 on the occasion of her Silver Jubilee.

Each of the four queens was presented in four color variants with an edition of 40 copies each. Added to this was the Royal Edition, of which 30 copies were issued. This special edition is characterized by the fact that the portraits, while they were still wet, were sprinkled with 'diamond dust', or finely ground glass splinters, which gave them a particularly glittering look.

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The new record portrait, which was auctioned at Heffel, is of course from the Royal Edition, and is even more special since it is one of only two copies marked 'HC' that were executed alongside the 30th edition. 'HC' means hors d’commerce ('not for sale') and specimens marked with this are usually given away by the artist as personal gifts.

The rarity of this specimen explains the high price that was achieved at Heffel. For comparison, a copy with the same colours from the regular edition was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York at the end of October for just $275,000. The events of 2022 also play a role, most notably the death of Elizabeth II on September 8, but also the recent platinum jubilee, in which the popularity of the monarch, who had fulfilled her duty as head of state for seven decades, was made even clearer.

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