Peter Blake
Godfather of British Pop, and the man who assembled the crowd on the Sgt. Pepper sleeve.
Peter Blake was born in Dartford in 1932, studied at the Royal College alongside the generation that made British Pop, and had already established a manner built on badges, wrestlers, pin-ups and fairground signwriting before Pop had a name. In 1967 he and Jann Haworth designed the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which remains the most reproduced image of his career and was made for a flat fee. He later helped found the Brotherhood of Ruralists in the West Country, returned to London, and has continued to make collage, print and assemblage into his nineties. He was knighted in 2002.
Blake is one of the most heavily editioned artists working in Britain, and the print output runs from small, early, genuinely scarce editions to very large recent screenprint and giclee editions published in the hundreds. The two are not comparable, and separating them is the whole of a valuation: publisher, date, edition size, and whether the sheet is signed and numbered in pencil. Paintings, collages and the boxed assemblages are unique and sit far above the prints. Condition of paper, fading and light damage are the usual issues.
If you own a work by Peter Blake
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.