McCartney Times

It was a commission for Paul McCartney’s Kintyre hideaway that led to the Beatles’ most memorable album cover. Now Sir Peter Blake’s version of The Monarch Of The Glen, made in the Swinging Sixties, could go on display alongside the 19th-century original if the latter is secured for the nation.

National Galleries of Scotland chiefs have revealed the idea after pop artist Blake, who painted his take on the masterpiece for McCartney’s dining room, recorded a message backing a £4 million fundraising drive to buy Sir Edwin Landseer’s picture. The National Galleries said it had four weeks to raise the final £750,000 to buy the painting from whisky giant Diageo, which had been poised to auction it off last November until it was asked to consider a “part-purchase, part-deal” gift. It would have to borrow the Blake painting directly from the former Beatle. It has been hanging for years in his McCartney Productions offices in London. The work was completed in 1966, shortly before the artist worked on the famous cover of the Beatles’ eighth album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The album cover depicted dozens of famous figures, including Bob Dylan, Mae West, Edgar Allan Poe, and Marilyn Monroe. Blake, who became known as the Godfather of British Pop Art, later worked on album covers with the likes of Paul Weller and The Who, and designed the sleeve for the Band Aid single Do They Know It’s Christmas? He said: “I met Paul McCartney in 1963 and in 1964 he asked if he could buy or commission a painting from me. He had just got the Mull of Kintyre [property] and had bought a painting of Highland cattle in a stream.

Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/heritage/paul-mccartney-s-monarch-of-the-glen-painting-could-go-on-display-alongside-original-masterpiece-1-4370442

Source: Paul McCartney’s Monarch of the Glen painting could go on display alongside original masterpiece – The Scotsman