SOTHEBY´S IS AUCTIONING THE ORIGINAL COLLAGE (SGT.PEPPER´S) BY PETER BLAKE

  

 

Detail of the original collage by British artist Peter Blake for the inner sleeve of the Beatles' 1967 album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.'

Sotheby's is auctioning the original collage by British artist Peter Blake that was designed and photographed for the inner sleeve of the Beatles' 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

The 12-by-12-inch collage, being auctioned at Sotheby's modern and postwar British art sale in London Nov. 13, is priced at £50,000 ($80,400) to £80,000 and in "remarkably good" condition, with its components still firmly affixed, said James Rawlin, Sotheby's senior specialist for modern and postwar British art.

The collage is among 18 works that Sotheby's is selling from the collection of the late British architect Colin St. John Wilson, including "Roxy Roxy," Mr. Blake's 1965 depiction of a fictional female wrestler priced at £150,000 to £250,000.

Though Paul McCartney concocted the idea of the fictional Sgt. Pepper, it was Mr. Blake who gave him a face, Mr. Rawlin said, tinting a portrait of an unknown "mustachioed military gent" of uncertain date, either Edwardian or Victorian England.

Mr. Blake, now 80, and his ex-wife Jann Haworth also helped the Beatles design the more famous cover of the album, constructing the fantastical set of characters, including Marlene Dietrich, Oscar Wilde and Fred Astaire, with whom the Beatles "posed." While the studio set was quickly dismantled, Mr. Blake and Ms. Haworth donated the inside sleeve in 1968 to the architect Mary Jane Long, Mr. Wilson's widow, as a gift.

"If you want to cut out those shapes you could almost become Sgt Pepper yourself, with the cutout mustache and the stripes and the badges," says Mr. Rawlin.

For fans without funds to buy the original, there's an alternative: Apple Corps and EMI are coincidentally releasing remastered vinyl versions of The Beatles albums, complete with the Sgt. Pepper's cutouts, on auction day.

Also up for auction are works from Mr. Wilson's collection by fellow Britons Patrick Caulfield, Richard Hamilton, William Coldstream and American photographer Robert Adams.

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