John Lennon
Trained at art school before the band, and drew in a fast, spare line all his life.
John Lennon was born in Liverpool in 1940 and attended Liverpool College of Art before the Beatles; drawing preceded music and continued alongside it. He published two illustrated books of drawings and nonsense writing, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works, in 1964 and 1965, and drew constantly in a rapid, spare line derived from Thurber and from newspaper cartooning. The Bag One portfolio of fourteen lithographs, made in 1969 as a wedding present for Yoko Ono, was seized by Scotland Yard from a London gallery on obscenity grounds. Real Love, the series of drawings for his son Sean, dates from the late 1970s. He was killed in 1980.
Bag One is the significant original graphic work and exists in a documented lithographic edition; complete portfolios in the original white case are far ahead of loose sheets. Everything else on the market is essentially posthumous: estate-authorised limited editions produced from his drawings, published in numbered runs, which are not the same thing as lifetime work and are valued accordingly. Certificates from the estate are expected. Original drawings and manuscripts trade in the music-memorabilia market rather than the art market, and value differently there.
If you own a work by John Lennon
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.