FLOAT 100 · Art · No. 30
Big Kitty
A two-meter cat built from thousands of tangled cartoon doodles, painted by a twenty-something from Kent who once traded drawings for fish and chips, sold in Hong Kong for more than twelve times its high estimate.
- Year
- 2019
- Maker
- Mr Doodle (Sam Cox)
- By price in art
- 30 of 100
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Create a free account- Artist
- Mr Doodle (Sam Cox), British, born in Kent
- Made
- 2019, signed and dated 2019
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Size
- 200 x 200 cm (78 3/4 x 78 3/4 in.)
- Chinese title
- Da Mao (Big Cat)
- First shown
- Doodle Tokyo, Daikanyama Hillside Forum, Tokyo, August 2019
- Sold
- April 28, 2022, at auction in Hong Kong
- Price
- HK$6,300,000 (reported as $802,917) against an estimate of HK$300,000-500,000
Graffiti spaghetti
Big Kitty is a square canvas two meters on a side, painted in acrylic in 2019 and signed and dated 2019. Like nearly all of Sam Cox's work, it is built from his signature style: dense, interlocking black-line cartoon creatures, objects and patterns that he calls 'graffiti spaghetti.' 'It's influenced by early-era New York street art,' he has said, 'but intertwined, overlapping and cartoonish.'
Cats are a recurring subject for him. In 2019 he also painted Pink Kitty and Blue Kitty, two canvases that would lead his first major auction run in 2020.
The painting was first shown in August 2019 at Doodle Tokyo, an exhibition at the Daikanyama Hillside Forum in Tokyo. The collector who later consigned it bought it from a Tokyo gallery.
The Doodle Man from Doodle Land
Sam Cox grew up in St Michaels, Kent, and drew compulsively from childhood. 'I'd get stacks of A4 printer paper from the supermarket and fill up every page,' he said. A school graphics teacher introduced him to graffiti and to Keith Haring, Yayoi Kusama and Jean Dubuffet. He went on to study illustration at the University of the West of England in Bristol, sometimes drawing 16 hours a day.
He invented his alter ego in December 2014, when he walked into an illustration class dressed head to toe in hand-doodled clothes and his instructor gave him the name. He built a whole mythology around it: Mr Doodle covers the planet in drawings, is banished to a paper galaxy called Doodle Land, and is exiled back to Earth by his evil twin, Dr. Scribble. In early videos he walked around Bristol trying to trade drawings for stationery, bus rides and fish and chips.
He graduated in 2015 and set up a studio in his parents' garage. His first commercial solo show, Attention Seeker, came in London in 2016. In spring 2017 a video of him spending more than 60 hours doodling the inside of an empty shop beside London's Old Street station went viral, and brand work followed. By March 2021 he had about 2.7 million Instagram followers, more than the Guggenheim Museum.
Asia, 2019
Big Kitty belongs to the year Mr Doodle's career turned toward East Asia. A July 2018 solo show in Seoul, Doodle World, was 'where my work began to receive interest from collectors,' Cox said. In 2019 he showed in Tokyo, where Big Kitty was first exhibited, and in December 2019 an auction house in Hong Kong hosted a selling exhibition of 52 new paintings riffing on famous masterpieces, with titles like Starry Doodle and The Doodle Girls of Avignon.
That same December Cox completed the purchase of a six-bedroom house in St Michaels, Kent, which he had bought for £1.35 million and meant to cover entirely in doodles. Work began in February 2020. Within weeks he suffered a psychotic episode, was hospitalized for about six weeks, and was still unwell when discharged in April 2020. He finished the house over a little more than two years, and the experience became the documentary The Trouble With Mr Doodle.
Hong Kong itself was in turmoil in 2019: on June 9 more than a million people marched against proposed legislation, the start of months of protest.
From $2,006 to the Hong Kong evening
Mr Doodle's auction career began late and fast. His first public auction result came on March 25, 2020, when an edition of his resin figure The Doodler sold for $2,006. In June 2020 an online sale offered 16 of his works; Pink Kitty and Blue Kitty, both from 2019, each sold for $22,577, about 25 times their $903 high estimates. Before that summer ended, a large green-and-black canvas titled Spring (2019) sold in Tokyo for $994,238.
In 2020 his works brought nearly $4.7 million at auction in just over nine months, placing him fifth among artists under 40 that year. Of 162 lots offered in 2020, 158 found buyers.
Big Kitty came up in Hong Kong on April 28, 2022, with an estimate of HK$300,000 to HK$500,000. It sold for HK$6,300,000, reported as $802,917, more than twelve times the high estimate. Market-data pages list it as the artist's highest auction price since 2020. An earlier report, however, gives Spring's 2020 sale at $994,238, which is higher, so whether Big Kitty is his top auction result depends on the source.
The buyer was not named. The painting is in a private collection.
What to look for
The painting is acrylic on a 200 by 200 cm canvas, signed and dated 2019. Its Chinese title, used in the Hong Kong sale, is Da Mao, 'Big Cat.' Its recorded exhibition is Doodle Tokyo at the Daikanyama Hillside Forum in August 2019.
Mr Doodle produces paintings, resin figures, sculptures and editions in large numbers, and several canvases share the kitty theme. Title, size, date and the Tokyo exhibition history are the details that separate this canvas from the others.
The numbers
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Dimensions
- 200 x 200 cm (78 3/4 x 78 3/4 in.)
- Inscription
- Signed and dated 2019
- Exhibited
- Doodle Tokyo, Daikanyama Hillside Forum, Tokyo, August 2019
- Catalogue raisonne
- None published
- Current owner
- Private; the 2022 buyer was not named
Timeline
Sam Cox debuts the Mr Doodle persona at university in Bristol.
Cox graduates and sets up a studio in his parents' garage.
First commercial solo show, Attention Seeker, in London.
A video of his 60-plus-hour doodle takeover of an empty London shop goes viral.
Doodle World opens in Seoul, his first show to draw serious collector interest.
Cox paints Big Kitty, acrylic on canvas, 200 x 200 cm.
Big Kitty is shown in Doodle Tokyo at the Daikanyama Hillside Forum.
A Hong Kong selling exhibition of 52 new paintings reportedly sells out; Cox completes the purchase of the house he will cover in doodles.
His first public auction result: The Doodler figure sells for $2,006.
Pink Kitty and Blue Kitty (2019) each sell for $22,577 in an online sale.
Spring (2019) sells in Tokyo for $994,238; he ranks fifth among under-40 artists at auction for the year.
Cox marries artist Alena Kaffa, later known as Mrs Doodle.
Big Kitty sells at auction in Hong Kong for HK$6,300,000 (reported as $802,917).
Mr Doodle! Museum Mayhem, his first museum exhibition, opens at the Holburne Museum in Bath and runs to September.
The world in 2019
China's Chang'e 4 becomes the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the Moon.
The Event Horizon Telescope team releases the first image of a black hole.
Fire destroys the spire and roof of Notre-Dame de Paris.
More than a million people march in Hong Kong against proposed legislation.
Boris Johnson becomes prime minister of the United Kingdom.
Johnson's Conservatives win a landslide in the UK general election.
Price record
| Date | Price | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Apr 28, 2022 | $802,917 | Sold at auctionSold at auction in Hong Kong for HK$6,300,000 including premium. Estimate was HK$300,000-500,000. |
A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.
By reference price, Big Kitty is number 30 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (30 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.
Did you know
- Mr Doodle's first auction result, in March 2020, was $2,006. Big Kitty sold for $802,917 about two years later.
- He got the name Mr Doodle from a university instructor after showing up to class in hand-doodled clothes.
- His backstory has him exiled from Doodle Land by an evil twin named Dr. Scribble.
- In 2020 he ranked fifth worldwide among artists under 40 for auction sales.
- He covered almost every inch of a six-bedroom house in Kent in doodles, inside and out.
- A school graphics teacher who introduced him to Keith Haring's work later became his company's creative director.
How this page is made
- The figure
- One reference price, shown with its own kind. FLOAT does not average it with anything or adjust it for time.
- Realized or not
- A realized price is a completed sale. An asking price, an estimate and a price-guide value are not sales, and are labeled as such wherever they appear.
- The story
- Researched from published records and checked fact by fact. Updated Oct 1, 2026.
- Archive
- Oct 5, 2026