Wednesday, July 15, 2020

The Painting





40 years ago this artwork of John and Sean was painted while they were in Burmuda.   The painting as far as I know, is still hanging in the Dakota.   Please don't comment on John's weight. Yes, he looks thin in these photos.   However --- I hate talking about people's weight.  I want John to be remembered for so much for than what he weighed the last year of his life.

Here is the story I found online from the artist the drew the painting.

John Lennon's arrival on the island was quite a shock for the American artist Nancy Gosnell, who ended up painting a portrait of John and Sean. John had seen her paintings at a house that he rented from her friend Rolf Luthi, she explained. "He said: 'John would like to have a portrait of Sean painted as a present for Yoko.' I said: 'Oh wonderful, I can do that.' Then I heard John wanted to have his portrait in the painting as well," says Gosnell, who was always fully booked.
Lennon and Sean – both wearing shorts and T-shirts – came to the door of the rented house. "They both sat down on the rug in the living room where I had set up my easel. Their house was on the water so I painted the scene [below] right outside their house so it looked like they were sitting on the beach. They had a big grand piano. John would call Yoko on the phone and play [songs on] the piano." These ended up on Double Fantasy.
"He spoke about his life and the Beatles and how Yoko had been his saviour, and he had been a mess and overweight and she had put him on a brown-rice diet. He did impersonations for me. I remember him doing Henry Kissinger, and he sang a little. One of the songs he sang was "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
John told her he "got tired of being a Beatle" because "he was writing music for teenagers", and now he wanted to "write for adults". He also asked for Gosnell's teacher's name in New York so that he could take lessons in portrait painting. Back home, the picture hung in his Dakota apartment, above his piano. "It almost seems like a fantasy in retrospect – John Lennon – probably the most famous person in the world," she says.

15 comments:

  1. Those are not t-shirts that John and Sean are wearing in the painting. Are they called under shirts?

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    1. They're often called 'muscle shirts'.

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    2. Also called “tank tops”.

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    3. In England they are called vests or singlets.

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    4. Tank tops is another name for them too.

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  2. very nice and to the point artist story

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  3. Sara,

    The Come Together outtake: "He's got teenage lyrics." -- after reading Nancy's Gosnell's comments, I will now listen to the song in a new light.

    Thanks for posting her comments. You rock.

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  4. All good but those shorts? Only daggy pommies would wear cut down denim jeans as shorts!

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    1. Not as bad as those ghastly Aussie stubbies or crimpolene shorts with long white socks. Please! Give Englishman John some credit for not falling down that hole!

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  5. By the time the Beatles had broken up a lot of the early fans had become young adults. I'm disappointed that John had that attitude. Yoko put that into his head. If he'd lived I wonder if he may have realized that many of his Beatles songs were actually more mature than some of his solo songs. And nearly all Beatles fans today are adults not teenagers.

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    1. More Yoko bashing (sigh). With sixty years of fans, it would make sense that the majority are adults.

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    2. mccarp555. Take a big breath and reread the first sentence. Do you also regard any valid criticism of the Beatles themselves as Beatle bashing? Perhaps you prefer the rosy specs approach.

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  6. As someone who is NOT a Yoko Ono fan, I do not believe Yoko put anything into John's head at all. Because the guy in his mid 20's who was uber-competing with Paul to constantly write catchy Hits was not the same guy by 1970.

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