You Beatles They are best known for their iconic albums, not necessarily their visual art. But a painting done and signed by all four band members recently auctioned at Christie's certainly seems to help change that.
Titled Images of a Woman (1966), the piece sold for $1.7 million with fees last week, nearly tripling its high estimate of $600,000.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison collaborated on the creation of the acrylic and watercolor painting when they were confined to the Presidential Suite at the Hilton Hotel in Tokyo for 100 hours between June 29 and July 3, 1966. Japanese authorities decided that this was the safest place to keep the band between their five performances at Budokan Hall.
Visitors passed through the hotel's large room during their quarantine there. Some brought gifts, including high-quality art supplies that the musicians would use for this painting.
The two-day process to produce the work, photographed by Robert Whitaker, shows the four musicians sitting in chairs around a table. A table lamp held the paper in place, leaving behind a large circle in the center of the piece, in which all the musicians signed their names.
All four band members had some prior art experience. Lennon, meanwhile, attended art school for three years and published two books of "lightning caricature" writing.
According to Whitaker, the four "never argued about what they were painting" and the image "evolved naturally".
While Whitaker captured images of the band creating other pieces of art made in that Tokyo hotel room in 1966, a Christie's auction essay said that "Pictures of a Woman is the only known substantial piece of art made by the four Beatles in their years together - an extraordinary and unique item that has the finest provenance."
The work was initially given to the president of the official Fan Club of the Beatles in Japan, Tetsusaburo Shimoyama. Record store owner Takao Nishino bought it in 1989. Nishino put it up for sale at Philip Weiss Auctions in 2012, and the Atlantic reported that he had, for a few years, stored the piece under a bed. The Christie's auction was consigned by UK-based Tracks Ltd., a dealer of US memorabilia. Beatles.