Queen Elizabeth’s childhood colouring book artwork up for auction for £6,000

Queen Elizabeth’s childhood colouring book artwork up for auction for £6,000 A collage colouring book created by the late queen when she was just eight years old has gone on sale, 70 years after it was given to a staff member of the Royal Household A colouring book collage created by the late Queen Elizabeth when she was a child has gone on sale at a Canadian auction house for £6,000. The artwork, depicting a scene from the Pied Piper, was crafted by the Queen when she was just eight years old, and has been described by auctioneers as a ‘charming reminder’. As a young princess, Elizabeth coloured in outlined figures of the piper, children, trees and houses using crayons before cutting them out and gluing them onto a larger sheet of paper. At the top of the collage artwork, it is signed ‘The Pied Piper, by Lilibet 1934’. On the back of the frame of which the work is protected, the Queen Mother wrote: “Painted by Princess Elizabeth of York, Xmas 1934”. She had started to write “Eliz” but crossed it out to use her daughter’s formal title instead. In the 1950s, the artwork - measuring 14 inches by 27 inches - was given by an unknown member of the royal household to James Ryan, a worker for the removals firm Bishop’s Move, which was employed by Buckingham Palace. It has since passed into a private collection and is being sold by Waddingtons in Toronto, Canada, where it is expected to sell for £6,000 when the auction takes place on October 22. Sean Quinn, a specialist at Waddingtons, said: “The picture, done at such a young age, was a gift from a member of the Buckingham Palace household in the 1950s to James Ryan. It is a charming reminder that our revered Queen Elizabeth II was once a little girl called Lilibet who liked to colour. Works by Her Majesty are rare, and I have high hopes for it.” While childhood works from the late Queen rarely go up for sale at auction, the collage comes after a letter penned by then Princess Elizabeth sold for a whopping £25,000, far exceeding the estimated price of £4,000. The one-page note, addressed to the head housemaid at Royal Lodge in Windsor, includes drawings of dogs, horses and young children and asks if "the birds are well, and the goldfish haven't died". The letter was written while the then Princess Elizabeth was in Praa Sands in Cornwall sometime between 1936 and 1940, when she would have been between 10 and 12 years old, the auctioneers said in February when it went up for sale. Justin Matthews, from Hansons Auctioneers, said: "In my 27 years in the international auction world I've never seen anything so beautiful. "When I first saw the letter, it gave me goosebumps. Queen Elizabeth II, as we remember her – with her love of dogs and horses – is astoundingly evident in this letter penned by her younger self.” He continued: “From these few lines we understand everything we later know about the late Queen. She is seen to be observant, kind and concerned with others’ wellbeing, just as she was in later years.” The letter went on sale just months before what would’ve been the late Queen’s 100th birthday in April, which was marked around the world with a series of centenary celebrations for the monarch.