John Lennon | Original "Treasure Ivan" drawing

John Lennon

An original drawing, titled "Treasure Ivan," [1964]

Black ink drawing on a leaf of paper (253 x 202 mm), titled at lower margin "Treasure Ivan" in Lennon's hand; small nick to lower margin under title, some very minor creasing at outer margins, inscribed "Reverse L to R" and "43" in blue ink and "80%" in pencil in an unknown hand.

An original John Lennon drawing of "Large John Saliver." This drawing is reproduced on page 43 of Lennon's first book, the delightfully nonsensical In His Own Write, published by Jonathan Cape in 1964. It was the first solo project by one of the Beatles in any creative medium, and was an enormous commercial and critical success: it sold more than 600,000 copies and was recommended by the Times Literary Supplement as "worth the attention of anyone who fears for the impoverishment of the English language and the British imagination."

There the drawing appears in the chapter "Treasure Ivan," which humorously retells the story of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island—one of Lennon's favorite childhood books. Large John Saliver is a peg-legged pirate who, along with his friend Small Jack Hawkins, search an island for buried treasure. The chapter in which this drawing is seen begins, in characteristically cockeyed fashion: "In a little seashore pub in Bristow, a ragged gather of rags are drinking and makeing melly (before sailing to sea in serge of grate treashy on a sudden Isle far across the ocean). 'Belay there me 'earty scabs,' says Large John Saliver entering. Pegging along towards some old saviours whom have soled the several seas" (Lennon, p. 42).

PROVENANCE:

The Tom Maschler Collection — Bonhams London, 13 December 2017, lot 148 — Iconic Auctions, 30 July 2022, lot 191