Oh the lengths two Dr. Seuss collectors will go to recover their missing artwork.
New York and LA-based collectors Clifford Davis and his stepson James Otis are suing a Chelsea gallery for allegedly losing a pair of extremely rare original drawings worth $150,000 by the late Theodor Seuss Geisel.
Better known as Dr. Seuss, Geisel wrote and illustrated popular children’s with titles like “Oh the Places You’ll Go, “The Cat in the Hat” series and, of course, “Green Eggs and Ham.”
Davis and Otis — who is married to the late Muppets creator Jim Henson’s daughter — say they purchased the two preliminary illustrations for the children’s book “You’re Only Old Once” in October 2008.
They loaned the pieces to Roger Reed’s gallery, the Illustration House on W. 27th Street in November 2012 for consignment.
If the pieces hadn’t sold by January 2013 Reed, whose gallery also shows the work of the late great Norman Rockwell, was supposed to return them to the owners.
But when they asked for their return last spring the “Reed advised Otis by telephone and email that the two Dr. Seuss artworks were missing and could not be located by Illustration House staff,” according to the Manhattan Supreme Court suit.
The collectors are “deeply concerned about their Dr. Seuss artwork,” they say in the suit. Otis, the husband of Lisa Henson who now runs Henson Pictures, is a devoted Dr. Seuss fan and has amassed a couple hundred of the author’s original sketches.
The pieces still hadn’t been recovered when the owners found a buyer so now they’re suing Reed for compensation.
Reed did not immediately return calls for comment.