Napoleon memorabilia sold at auction

Rare memorabilia of former French Emperor Napoleon I, including a lock of hair cut from his head after he died in exile in 1821 on the remote island of St Helena, fetched £64,000 at auction.

Bidders from England, France, Lithuania, Hong Kong and the US joined the auction by phone for the 40 items - sold by a New Zealand family, descendants of Denzil Ibbetson, commissionary officer on St Helena during Napoleon's incarceration on the remote island.

The highest price £9,700 was paid for a lithograph and watercolour death bed sketch of Napoleon by Denzil Ibbetson, Art+Object auction house managing director Hamish Coney, said. The unnamed buyer bid by phone from London.

A lock of hair Denzil Ibbetson cut from the former emperor's head fetched £8,700 from a private collector in London who did not want to be identified, he said.

Denzil Ibbetson, a talented artist, completed many drawings and paintings of Napoleon and of scenes on the South Atlantic island of St Helena, a British colony, and the private collection came to New Zealand with his son in the 1860s.

The historical collection, probably the most important ever to have been found in Australia or New Zealand, had been held in the family ever since, Mr Coney said.

"I can't think of anything that's comparable," he said.