Andy Warhol portrait of Queen Elizabeth II to be auctioned in Toronto next month

It’s not every day that the work of a world-famous artist goes up for auction in our city, and the subject of his portrait is equally as well-known. An original Andy Warhol Queen Elizabeth II screenprint will be auctioned in Toronto this November and it’s worth a pretty penny.

The live auction will be hosted by Heffel at the Park Hyatt hotel in Toronto, and the Warhol piece will be included in the Post-War & Contemporary portion of the event.

The portrait is actually a screenprint on Lenox Museum Board with diamond dust and is a highly-coveted Royal Edition.

“Warhol produced four versions of the portrait in different colours, with coloured lines drawn on the screenprint of the photograph and overlaid with contrasting patches of geometric colour blocks,” the description says.

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It’s one of several works in Warhol’s Reigning Queens series, which the artist produced in 1985 based on photographs of the only four reigning queens in the world at the time, according to Heffel.

This image of the Queen is based on a photograph taken by Peter Grugeon at Windsor Castle in 1975 for her Silver Jubilee.

The Queen showed her approval of Warhol’s work in her own way. The response from Buckingham Palace was that “Her Majesty was most pleased and interested to see” the portraits.

Given her recent passing and the fond memories of her visits to Toronto throughout her reign, it’s an exciting time for this iconic work to be up for auction in the city.

The current owners of Warhol’s print bought it from a renowned Vancouver collector named Bob Rennie, “who has one of the largest and most important collections of contemporary art globally,” says Heffel.

The estimate of the print is a whopping $500,000 to $600,000. If you won the lottery recently and are looking for ways to spend your riches, you can participate in the live auction on November 24th at 5 PM.