Sold at Auction: Anton Franciscus Pieck

Dutch artist Anton Pieck is best known for his illustrations of The Arabian Knights and Grimm's Fairy Tales and classically-detailed cards and calendars illustrating family occasions, fairy tales, and holiday celebrations. Anton Pieck's paintings and prints are imbued with a magical sense of 19-century European tradition, stirring quaint notions of the "good old days." You can find charming vintage genre drawings for sale at Invaluable.

Anton displayed a great talent for art early in life, winning his first prize for a still-life oil painting at the age of eleven. From the age of 25 until his retirement in 1960, he was an art teacher at the Kennemer Lyceum in Bloemendaal.

Pieck's oeuvre extended beyond paintings in oil and watercolor, to include etchings, engravings, lithographs, travel drawings, woodcarvings, and book illustrations, but perhaps his grandest creation was the fairy tale theme park De Efteling, built in 1952 and still one of the most popular themed attractions in Europe. In 1972 Pieck's skills were tapped for the creation of the Autotron car museum in Drunen.