FLOAT 100 · Art · No. 73
The Virtues – Loyalty (H9-7)
In one week of lockdown in 2021, 1,067 people each paid a few thousand for a signed Damien Hirst cherry tree named for a samurai virtue, and could pay in Bitcoin if they liked; the edition size was set by nothing more than how many of them asked.
- Year
- 2021
- Maker
- Damien Hirst
- By price in art
- 72 of 100
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Create a free account- Artist
- Damien Hirst
- Title
- H9-7 Loyalty, from The Virtues
- Year
- 2021
- Medium
- Laminated giclée print on aluminum composite panel
- Size
- 120 x 96 cm (about 47 1/4 x 37 3/4 in)
- Edition
- 1,067, the number of copies sold during the release window
- Signature
- Hand signed and numbered on the label on the back
- Publisher
- HENI Editions, London
- Release
- February 26 to March 3, 2021, at $3,000 per print
- Based on
- Hirst's Cherry Blossoms paintings, 2018-20
Cherry trees in lockdown
Between 2018 and 2020 Damien Hirst painted a large series of canvases of cherry trees in bloom, thickly built up from dabs and flicks of paint. He called them 'garish and messy and fragile,' and said they were about 'beauty and life and death.' The blossoms, he explained, stand for 'the momentary, the insane transience of beauty,' and he has linked the subject to trees from his childhood in Devon.
In early 2021, with England back under a stay-at-home lockdown, Hirst and his publisher turned those paintings into The Virtues: eight large prints, each a single blossoming tree, each made as a laminated giclée on an aluminum panel about 120 by 96 centimeters. The series is catalogued as H9, and Loyalty is the seventh print, H9-7.
Loyalty shows a broad cherry tree in full bloom, its branches reaching across the panel, with blossoms in pinks, reds and greens set against a pale blue sky. Hirst has said the works nod to Impressionism, Pointillism and Action Painting.
Eight samurai virtues
Each print is named after one of the eight virtues of Bushidō, the samurai code, as set out by the Japanese writer Nitobe Inazō in his 1900 book on samurai ethics: Justice, Courage, Mercy, Politeness, Honesty, Honour, Loyalty and Control. In that tradition, loyalty is devotion to one's lord and, by extension, to authority and the state.
Hirst is the British artist best known as a leader of the Young British Artists movement. The Virtues, published by HENI Editions in London, was his second print series drawn from the Cherry Blossoms, and it was sold entirely online.
A sale built for 2021
The Virtues went on sale on February 26, 2021, through HENI's online marketplace, and closed at 23:59 Pacific time on March 3. Every print was priced at $3,000 before tax (one report gave the price in pounds instead). Buyers could take at most one of each of the eight titles, and the number made of each print was simply the number ordered in that week.
It was also the first time Hirst and the platform accepted cryptocurrency. Buyers could pay in Bitcoin or Ether, and Hirst said he was 'happy and proud to put my belief into Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).' Two weeks later, on March 11, 2021, a digital work by the artist Beeple sold for $69.35 million at auction in New York, the moment that pulled crypto art into the mainstream.
Demand varied widely by title. Politeness, the most popular, sold 1,549 copies; Honour, the least, 693. Loyalty came second at 1,067, which is why its edition is among the largest in the series.
On the secondary market
Buyers received their prints around mid-May 2021. That July, more than 100 of Hirst's cherry blossom paintings went on view for the first time at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, in an exhibition that ran from July 6, 2021, to January 2, 2022, and drew wide attention to the source paintings.
Loyalty has since appeared at auction around 31 times, according to one print-market tracker, with hammer prices over five years ranging from £6,092 to £28,224. Results reported in pounds include a hammer of £8,500 in London on March 25, 2026, and a sale on May 26, 2026, at £5,000 with fees. A complete set of all eight Virtues sold in New York for $152,400, against an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000.
Resale listings show how far prices have spread. The publisher's own resale marketplace listed a Loyalty at $22,000 when checked for this page.
How to identify one
A genuine Loyalty is a single rigid panel, not a paper print: a laminated giclée flush-mounted on aluminum composite, with metal strainers on the back. It measures 120 by 96 centimeters. The edition number and Hirst's pencil signature appear on a label fixed to the reverse, not on the image.
Check the edition number against the edition size. Loyalty's edition is 1,067, so any number out of 760 is a sign of a cataloguing slip: 760 is the edition size of Courage, H9-2. At least one resale listing for Loyalty carries exactly that error.
The numbers
- Medium
- Laminated giclée print on aluminum composite panel
- Dimensions
- 120 x 96 cm
- Edition size
- 1,067
- Catalogue number
- H9-7
- Series editions
- Justice 1,005; Courage 760; Mercy 817; Politeness 1,549; Honesty 728; Honour 693; Loyalty 1,067; Control 862
Timeline
Nitobe Inazō publishes his book on Bushidō, the source of the eight virtues.
Hirst begins his Cherry Blossoms paintings, which continue into 2020.
England enters its third national lockdown.
HENI Editions opens sales of The Virtues at $3,000 per print, with Bitcoin and Ether accepted.
The sale window closes at 23:59 PST; Loyalty's edition is fixed at 1,067.
Prints are expected to ship to buyers in mid-May.
Damien Hirst: Cherry Blossoms opens at the Fondation Cartier, Paris, the first showing of the paintings.
The Fondation Cartier exhibition closes.
A Loyalty sells at auction in London for a hammer of £8,500.
A Loyalty sells at auction for £5,000 with fees.
The world in 2021
Boris Johnson announces a third lockdown for England, with schools moving to remote learning.
A Botticelli portrait sells for $92.2 million at auction in New York.
Johnson unveils a four-step plan to end England's lockdown.
Beeple's NFT Everydays: the First 5000 Days sells for $69.35 million.
Non-essential shops and pub gardens reopen in England.
Frieze opens at The Shed, the first major art fair in New York in more than a year.
England loses the Euro 2020 final to Italy on penalties.
Price record
| Date | Price | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 26, 2021 | $3,000 | Asking price, not a salePublisher's release price per print, February 26 to March 3, 2021. |
| Oct 3, 2026 | $22,000 | Asking price, not a saleListed on the publisher's resale marketplace. |
This is an asking price, not a sale. It is what a seller wanted on the date shown. Asking prices often sit above what buyers pay, but an ask is not a ceiling: a sale can land on either side of it. It is not a value.
By reference price, The Virtues – Loyalty (H9-7) is number 72 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 (73 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.
Did you know
- Nobody chose the edition size: it is the number of people who ordered Loyalty in one week in 2021.
- The Virtues was the first time Hirst accepted Bitcoin and Ether for his work.
- Buyers were limited to one copy of each print, but could buy all eight.
- The prints went on sale months before the paintings they reproduce were first shown in public, in Paris that July.
- Loyalty's 1,067 copies make it the second-largest edition of the eight, behind Politeness at 1,549.
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 3, 2026.
- Archive
- Oct 5, 2026