Lot 1302: SÍS, PETER, b.1949.- "The Hobbit or There and Back Again,"

"The Hobbit or There and Back Again," watercolor with pen-and-ink and gold paint, 406 x 215 mm, signed "SÍS" in lower central panel. Published: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), front cover of dust jacket. Czech-born illustrator Peter Sís is one of the most honored of contemporary children's book artists. His picture books have been named Caldecott Honor Books and have regularly appeared in the New York Times best illustrated books of the year list. He is also the first children's book illustrator to have been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Sís employed a lighter, more fanciful approach to the great children's classic than that of previous artists. The various panels offer his solution to capturing the complexity of the novel in a single composition.