The Little Red Hen: Andy Warhol’s Pre-Pop 1958 Children’s Illustration

How to own “a Warhol” for under $5, part deux.

Several weeks ago, we uncovered some little-known children’s illustration by Andy Warhol from the 1959 anthology Best of Children’s Books #27. (A discovery made in the research process of this series on obscure children’s books by famous authors.) But it turns out the gig wasn’t a one-off for Warhol, who in the 1950s was making a living as part of Doubleday’s stable of freelance artists. The previous year, he also illustrated a story titled “The Little Red Hen” for Best of Children’s Books #15, which you can snag as a used copy with some rummaging through Amazon. The vibrant technicolor artwork, an outlier in the warm pastel color schemes of 1950s children’s illustration, offers a fascinating prequel to Warhol’s budding pop art aesthetic — one you can acquire for under $5, not a bad deal for rare, limited-edition work by one of only seven artists in the world to have ever sold a canvas for $100 million.

Catch up on Warhol’s subsequent children’s illustration with the 1959 story “Card Games Are Fun.”

via How To Be A Retronaut and Brain Pickings.