(London) Freddie Mercury’s piano, on which he composed almost all of his work from Bohemian Rhapsody, sold for 1.742 million pounds sterling (3 million) during auction events at Sotheby’s in London on Wednesday evening.
The main item in a series of sales of thousands of objects that belonged to the singer of Queen, this Yamaha baby grand nevertheless sold, including costs, below the estimate published by the auction house, between 2 and £3 million (3.4-5.1 million).
The British singer, who died of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 45, bought it for a thousand pounds in 1975.
Another major piece, the Bohemian Rhapsody manuscript sold for £1.3 million ($2.2 million).
The fifteen pages written in pencil and ballpoint pen reveal the different directions envisaged by the artist for this title which was initially to be called Mongolian Rhapsody.
Sotheby’s had published an estimate between 800,000 and 1.2 million pounds sterling (1.4 million and 2.1 million).
Proofs of We Are The Champions went for 317,000 pounds ($541,000), as did those of Don’t Stop Me Now.
Opened to the rhythm of We Will Rock You, the evening was to see 59 lots go under the hammer of auctioneer Oliver Barker.
First of these, the door to Garden Lodge, the home of Freddie Mercury in West London. Saturated with fan graffiti, the property’s green door sold – including fees – for £412,750 ($704,000), smashing the auction house’s published estimate of £15,000-25,000. .
These auctions also saw a succession of paintings that adorned the interior of the legendary rocker: works by Chagall, Dali, Picasso, as well as the last painting purchased by the artist, a month before his death, an oil on canvas by James Tissot, sold for 483,600 pounds ($825,000).
After Wednesday’s sale, two more indoor auctions are to follow in addition to three online sales.
All these objects are put up for sale by Mary Austin, a close friend with whom he was even engaged for a time and whom Freddie Mercury had made his heiress.
“Mary Austin lived with the collection” and “tended it for more than three decades” at the Garden Lodge where she lived, Gabriel Heaton, book and manuscript specialist at Sotheby’s, told AFP last month.
“It didn’t interest ‘Freddie Mercury’ to have a museum of his life, but he loved auctions”, to the point of being a regular at Sotheby’s, he had clarified.
In addition to the artist, the lots put up for auction also tell the story of the man that Freddie Mercury was, his passion for cats, Japan – as evidenced by his collection of kimonos and prints –, his taste for receptions.
The contents of his wardrobe will also change hands, his most flamboyant stage costumes, his Hawaiian shirts, his Superman tank top.
There are also more intimate objects, such as this collection of poetry annotated by his hand when he was a teenager, a mustache comb; fun too, like a set of games including a travel Scrabble, of which the rocker was a formidable player.
Before being scattered, the collection was brought together in a month-long free exhibition at Sotheby’s in London, which welcomed 140,000 visitors, according to the auction house.
In April, when the auction was announced, Sotheby’s estimated it would fetch at least £6 million (over £10.2 million).
Profits will be donated in part to the Mercury Phoenix Trust and Elton John Aids Foundation, two organizations involved in the fight against AIDS.
The 215,000 pounds sterling (250,000 euros) – price under the hammer, excluding costs – from the sale of a Cartier ring offered by Elton John to Freddie Mercury, will be entirely donated to the singer’s foundation.
According to Sotheby’s, it is the largest collection, by volume, of a superstar or cultural icon since the Elton John sale in 1988, when 2,000 lots sold in total for £4.8 million.
