Campbell's Soup I: Tomato (F. & S. II.46)

Thirty-two cans on a shelf

The print begins with a painting series. In late 1961, working at his home studio at 1342 Lexington Avenue in New York, Warhol started a set of 32 hand-painted canvases, each 20 by 16 inches and each showing a different variety of Campbell's soup. They were based on photographs taken by his former boyfriend Edward Wallowitch. By March 1962 the critic David Bourdon had seen them in the studio, and on May 11, 1962, Time magazine noted that Warhol was 'currently occupied with a series of portraits of Campbell's soup cans in living colour.'

Where the idea came from is told several ways, and Warhol told it several ways himself. One widely repeated story credits Muriel Latow, who allegedly told him in late 1961 to paint 'something you see every day and that everybody would recognize, like a can of Campbell's Soup,' and was paid $50 for the suggestion. Warhol's own explanation was plainer: 'I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day, for twenty years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.'

The 32 canvases opened on July 9, 1962, at Irving Blum's gallery on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, with Warhol absent and no formal opening. Blum set the paintings in a single row on narrow ledges, like groceries on a shelf. A Los Angeles Times cartoon ridiculed them, and a nearby dealer stocked real soup cans and advertised them as cheaper than Warhol's. Only five or six paintings sold at $100 each, among them the tomato can, which the actor Dennis Hopper had reserved before the opening. Blum then decided the set should stay together, asked the buyers to give their paintings back, and agreed to pay Warhol $1,000 over ten months for all 32.

The show closed on August 4, 1962, the same day Marilyn Monroe died. Within months Campbell's itself, which had sent lawyers to look at the trademark question during the exhibition, commissioned Warhol to paint a tomato soup can as a gift for its retiring board chairman, Oliver G. Willits.

The illustrator who wanted to be a machine

Warhol was born in Pittsburgh in 1928 and studied pictorial design and painting at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. He moved to New York in 1949 and quickly found success as a commercial illustrator; his first published drawing appeared in Glamour that same year. At Carnegie Tech he had developed a 'blotted line' technique, tracing an image and blotting the wet ink to get an irregular, printed-looking line, a first step toward the mechanical look he later chased.

Around 1962, as the Metropolitan Museum of Art puts it, he adopted a more graphic and detached style of bold colors, crisp outlines and commercial imagery, and screenprinting suited it because it let him repeat photographic images again and again. He kept returning to the soup can. In 1965 he made 20 larger Colored Campbell's Soup Cans that narrowed the subject to a single product, tomato soup, and varied only the color. By 1982 he had made more than 100 soup can images, from 20 inches to 6 feet tall.

Warhol explained the print project in one sentence: 'the reason I'm painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do.' In 1967 he founded Factory Additions to publish large editions of his best-known images. The name played on his studio, the Factory, and on the near rhyme of 'additions' and 'editions.'

Campbell's Soup I, 1968

Campbell's Soup I appeared in 1968: ten screenprints, each a single can, printed by Salvatore Silkscreen Co. in New York in an edition of 250 portfolios plus 26 lettered artist's proofs. The ten varieties are Black Bean, Chicken Noodle, Tomato, Onion, Vegetable, Beef with Vegetables and Barley, Green Pea, Pepper Pot, Consomme and Cream of Mushroom. The sets were available for purchase at the Factory. Unlike the follow-up portfolio, Campbell's Soup II of 1969, which used updated and more elaborate label designs, the first portfolio reproduces the original labels.

Tomato, cataloged by Frayda Feldman and Jorg Schellmann as II.46, is the third sheet. It shows the classic red-and-white can with the gold medallion at its center. Compared with the 1962 paintings, the prints removed nearly every trace of the hand: polished, impersonal and close to the look of supermarket advertising, which was the point.

1968 was the year Warhol nearly died. On June 3 the writer Valerie Solanas shot him at the Factory, and he survived only after a five-hour operation. The same spring brought the Tet Offensive, the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. and the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy two days after Warhol's own. Against that year, the cool, identical soup cans read either as an escape or as a deadpan record of a country that kept buying the same thing.

Museums collected the portfolio early. The Whitney Museum of American Art holds impression 114/250 of Tomato, bought with funds from the Friends of the Whitney. The Museum of Modern Art owns the portfolio as a gift of the architect Philip Johnson. The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought a complete set in 1995 with help from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; its Tomato is object 1995.278.3. The National Gallery of Australia, the Norton Simon Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario, which acquired a complete set in 2017, hold it too.

From $100 cans to six-figure prints

The painted cans that sold for $100 apiece in 1962 became a museum treasure. Blum placed the 32 canvases on permanent loan to the National Gallery of Art in Washington on February 20, 1987, two days before Warhol's death, and in October 1996 the Museum of Modern Art acquired them for about $15 million.

The prints followed the same arc on a smaller scale. One market tracker counts 33 auction sales of Tomato II.46 since its first in 2000. In April 2016 an impression sold at auction in New York for $106,250, announced as a world auction record for the sheet. On October 25, 2018, impression 125/250, its red 'slightly attenuated (as is common)' and with two small moisture stains at the lower edge, sold for $100,000 against an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000. Complete Campbell's Soup I sets reached $850,000 in October 2017, a record for the series.

In April 2019 impression 238/250 was offered at auction with an estimate of $50,000 to $70,000. On April 15, 2026, impression 12/250 sold at auction in New York for $101,600 against an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. In June 2026 another Tomato sold at auction in London; a market tracker records a hammer of £120,000, or $210,000 with the buyer's premium by its conversion, the high end of a five-year range that it says began at £42,839 in March 2024.

Theft followed value. In 2016 seven prints from Campbell's Soup I were stolen from the Springfield Art Museum in Missouri, and the FBI offered a $25,000 reward for information. The museum later received a $750,000 insurance settlement.

How to identify a 1968 Tomato

A genuine impression from the 1968 edition is a sheet of about 35 by 23 inches. Sale catalogs and museum records describe it as signed in ballpoint pen on the reverse and stamp-numbered out of 250, with 26 artist's proofs lettered A to Z, published by Factory Additions, New York, and printed by Salvatore Silkscreen Co. Buyers check the sheet against Feldman and Schellmann II.46.

Beware the 'Sunday B. Morning' prints. In 1970 Warhol supplied negatives, color codes and screens for a European collaboration; after an edition of 250 was signed and numbered, unauthorized versions were printed in Brussels, and they include reproductions of Campbell's Soup I and II. They are a separate, later product, not the 1968 edition.

Condition moves price. Catalogers note fading of the red, which one sale described as common, as well as moisture stains and handling marks. Image size is also a check: museum records give the printed image as about 31 7/8 by 18 7/8 inches inside the full sheet. One encyclopedia lists the sheet as 91.8 by 61.3 cm, larger than every museum and sale record consulted, so measure against the museum figures.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint in colors on wove paper

Dimensions

Sheet 35 1/8 x 23 1/16 in (89.2 x 58.6 cm); image 31 7/8 x 18 7/8 in (81 x 48 cm)

Catalogue raisonne

Feldman and Schellmann II.46

Edition

250 plus 26 lettered artist's proofs

Public collections

Metropolitan Museum of Art (1995.278.3); Whitney Museum of American Art (impression 114/250); Museum of Modern Art (portfolio, gift of Philip Johnson)

Timeline

1. 1928

   Andy Warhol is born in Pittsburgh.

2. 1949

   Warhol moves to New York and begins work as a commercial illustrator.

3. 1961

   In late 1961 Warhol begins the 32 Campbell's Soup Cans canvases at 1342 Lexington Avenue.

4. May 11, 1962

   Time magazine reports that Warhol is painting 'portraits' of Campbell's soup cans.

5. Jul 9, 1962

   The 32 soup can paintings open in Los Angeles, displayed on ledges like groceries.

6. Aug 4, 1962

   The Los Angeles show closes, the day Marilyn Monroe dies.

7. 1965

   Warhol paints 20 Colored Campbell's Soup Cans, all tomato soup.

8. 1967

   Warhol founds Factory Additions to publish editions of his best-known images.

9. 1968

   Campbell's Soup I is published: ten screenprints, edition of 250 plus 26 lettered proofs; Tomato is II.46.

10. Jun 3, 1968

    Valerie Solanas shoots Warhol at the Factory; he survives after a five-hour operation.

11. 1969

    Campbell's Soup II follows with ten newer label designs.

12. Feb 20, 1987

    The 32 original canvases go on permanent loan to the National Gallery of Art, two days before Warhol's death.

13. 1995

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquires a complete Campbell's Soup I portfolio.

14. Oct 1996

    The Museum of Modern Art acquires the 32 original canvases for about $15 million.

15. Apr 2016

    A Tomato sells at auction in New York for $106,250, announced as a world auction record for the sheet.

16. Oct 2017

    A complete Campbell's Soup I set sells for $850,000, a record for the series.

17. Oct 25, 2018

    Impression 125/250 sells at auction for $100,000, well above its estimate.

18. Nov 8, 2022

    Climate activists glue themselves to the glass over a Campbell's Soup I display in Canberra; the prints are not damaged.

19. Apr 15, 2026

    Impression 12/250 sells at auction in New York for $101,600.

20. Jun 2026

    A Tomato sells at auction in London for a £120,000 hammer, by one tracker's record.

The world in 1968

• Jan 30, 1968

  The Tet Offensive begins in South Vietnam.

• Apr 4, 1968

  Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated.

• Apr 23, 1968

  Student protesters occupy buildings at Columbia University in New York, shutting it down for a week.

• Apr 29, 1968

  The musical Hair opens on Broadway.

• Jun 5, 1968

  Robert F. Kennedy is shot in Los Angeles and dies the next day.

• Oct 16, 1968

  Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists on the medal stand at the Mexico City Olympics.

• Dec 24, 1968

  Apollo 8 orbits the Moon and the Earthrise photograph is taken.

Price record

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, Campbell's Soup I: Tomato (F. & S. II.46) is number 46 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 (52 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The original soup can paintings sold for $100 each in 1962, and the dealer then bought back the few he had sold so the set of 32 could stay together.
• Dennis Hopper reserved the tomato can painting before the 1962 Los Angeles show even opened.
• A dealer near the 1962 show stocked real Campbell's soup cans and advertised them as cheaper than Warhol's.
• At a 1964 show called The American Supermarket, real cans of Campbell's soup signed by Warhol sold for $6.50 each.
• Campbell's first sent lawyers to look at the trademark question, then commissioned Warhol to paint a tomato soup can for its retiring chairman.
• In 1967 Campbell's sold a paper 'Souper Dress' covered in soup cans for $1 plus two labels; the Met's costume collection now owns one.
• Factory Additions was named for Warhol's studio and the near rhyme of 'additions' and 'editions.'