Estimate: $3,000 - $5,000
What Do You See? The Collection of Sidney Rothberg, Part II
Auction: February 28, 2024 at 12 PM ET
Titled ‘MAR’ verso, watercolor, pencil on chromolithograph collage
Sheet size: 11 x 8 in. (27.9 x 20.3cm)
Executed in 1977.
Sotheby's, London, sale of June 27, 1985, lot 575b.
Acquired directly from the above sale.
The Collection of Sidney Rothberg, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
“Peter Blake,” The Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom, February 9-March 20, 1983, no. 179.
Peter Blake, an exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1983, no. 179.
Sir Peter Blake’s eclectic oeuvre has long been associated with Pop art in Britain. His work incorporates a myriad of interests and influences, including Victoriana. He is well-known for his pioneering use of collage as a preferred medium, as in the present lot, which was executed in 1977 – a decade after he designed the collage-inspired cover of the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
The present work has a quintessentially English feel to it, with Blake imaginatively incorporating a Victorian photograph in chromolithography with pencil and watercolor. It features a head and shoulders portrait of a young girl inset – possibly one of the artist’s daughters – flanked by two birds, a nest, and flowers. March is from the Calendar (In Progress) series depicting the twelve months, with each work reflecting that month’s mood, and it was exhibited in 1983 at the Tate Gallery.