Artist Grayson Perry in front of his tapestry, ‘Comfort Blanket’.
Grayson Perry is an English artist best-known for his ceramics and tapestries, as well as for his flamboyant cross-dressing. Perry tends to work with traditional mediums to uncompromisingly explore contemporary social issues and difficult themes, and he is often regarded as one of the most innovative artists alive today.
Perry’s work is especially sought-after in the United Kingdom, and it has increased in popularity in recent years. Though he is primarily a ceramicist, Perry has also experimented with other mediums, including printmaking, which he has called “a major part of my practice”. Indeed, prints account for 23% of the artist’s work sold at auction, and they tend to fetch between £100 and £500, though a significant number have sold for up to £50,000.
Below is a list of Grayson Perry’s five most expensive prints sold at auction. If you own a Grayson Perry print and would like to know more about how much it may be worth, or how to sell it, get in touch with Mark Littler today.
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Map Of An Englishman
At first glance, this 2004 print resembles a 16th or 17th century map, but upon closer inspection, viewers realise that instead of geographical features or physical locations, Perry has labelled various psychological states, behaviours, fears, emotions, and desires. The imaginary island on the map vaguely recalls the shape of a human brain, and it has been separated into ‘counties’ bearing names such as ‘Dreams’, ‘Myth’, ‘Sex’, and ‘Cliché’. Within these is an extraordinary number of detailed buildings, roads, forests, mountains, and rivers, all painstakingly labelled in Perry’s typically caustic and humorous way.
The map is a wonderfully imaginative piece of work. Despite only being printed as an edition of 50, the etching is extremely popular, and it accounts for Perry’s four most expensive prints sold at auction. This particular version was sold by Sotheby’s in June 2024 for £120,000, setting a new record for the artist.
Map of an Englishman sold by Sotheby’s in 2024
A Map Of Days (Blue)
Executed in a similar style to the Map of an Englishman prints, A Map of Days was loosely inspired by a map from John Bunyan’s canonical 1678 text The Pilgrim’s Progress, and it has been described by Perry as a “self-portrait as a fortified town.”
The print is a detailed and honest exploration of Perry’s psyche, and it was sold by Phillips in June 2021 for £60,000, nearly double its top estimate. At the centre of the map is an open space containing a tiny figure labelled ‘a sense of self’; in Perry’s own words, “‘the self’ I think is not a single fixed thing but a lifelong shifting performance. In the centre is an open space; there is no pearl; no central core; our ‘selves’ are but shifting layers of experience. My ‘sense of self’ is a tiny man kicking a can down the road.”
A Map of Days (Blue) sold by Phillips in 2021
Print For A Politician (Violet)
Grayson Perry described this print as “a playscape, the sort of imaginative universe you spread out in front of you as a child, like a model-railway set.” It’s an interesting description, given that Perry’s difficult childhood pushed him to create imaginative worlds to retreat into, yet the subject matter of this violence-filled print is certainly far from childlike.
Perry used the geography of Venice as “the layout of [his] battle,” and then randomly added as many different groups as he could think of, from “Male Chauvinist Pigs” and “Perverts” to “Thick People”, “Transvestites”, “Romantics”, “Teenagers,” and more. Though every group in the image is carrying weapons and about to engage in combat, there are no clear sides, and it seems everybody is at war with each other.
Perry said his aim was to “make [people] think about who they are and which side they fall on. There’s no such thing really as ‘us’ and ‘them.’” His fantasy was that the print might one day hang in a politician’s office, so he was delighted when he found out one did end up in the House of Commons art collection. The print is also quite popular at auction, and this violet version was sold by Phillips in September 2022 for £40,000.
Print for a Politician (Violet) sold by Phillips in 2022
The American Dream (Pink And Mauve)
This enormous print from 2021 was sold by Christie’s in September 2023 for £40,000, and it represents the US culture war that Perry has observed taking place online. The artist said that “When looking at the conflicts that swirl around social media, I find it illuminating to observe the scene like a psychotherapist might listen to a client” – something he perhaps learnt from his wife, British psychotherapist and writer, Phillippa Perry.
The American Dream (Pink Christie’s in 2023
Map Of Nowhere
Perry’s work is often influenced by literature, and this 2008 print was partly inspired by Thomas More’s 1516 classic text, Utopia, which explores a fictional island society and plays with the Greek terms ou and topos, thus roughly translating as ‘no place’. Perry described this print as “like a mood board of what was going on in my head at the time”, and it is an exploration of contemporary western life and its spiritual meaning (or lack thereof).
In the top left of the print is Perry’s alter-ego, Claire, who often appears in his artwork and who, in this case, has been given a sainthood. The print was sold by Phillips in September 2019 for £22,000, and it exemplifies Perry’s belief that there is no “neat ending” in life or way “to tidy up the mess of the world.” As he says, “life doesn’t work like that – it’s a continuum.”
Map of Nowhere sold by Phillips in 2019
