Sir Peter Blake

(British, born 1932)

Kenney Jones, Drummer with 'The Who' 15.8 x 15.8 cm. (6 1/4 x 6 1/4 in.)

Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
The sitter
With Waddington Galleries, London
Private Collection, U.K.

Peter Blake's synonymy with British popular culture has given us some of the most iconic images of the last five decades, often through the art of record sleeves. Paul Weller's Stanley Road, Band Aid's Do They Know its Christmas, Oasis' Stop the Clocks, and of course The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club were all masterminded by Blake. Positioned as 'pop-artist laureate' in 1981, the same year that he was elected Royal Academician, Peter Blake was approached by the legendary rock band The Who to produce the cover-art for their ninth studio album Face Dances. Blake in turn commissioned fifteen of his contemporaries to paint portraits of the four band members to be presented in grid format alongside just a single portrait by his own hand. The roster of artists selected extends to some of the most forward thinking of the second half of the 20th century; Richard Hamilton, Michael Andrews, Allen Jones, David Hockney, R. B. Kitaj, Patrick Caulfield and Joe Tilson, the resultant collaboration fronting the platinum selling album and adorning countless bedroom walls in its poster format.

For his own contribution to the cover, the present work, Blake elected to paint the band's new drummer, Kenney Jones; now an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and formerly of the band's Small Faces and Faces, Jones replaced Keith Moon as The Who's drummer from 1979 onwards. In this highly detailed depiction Blake deftly captures Jones' boyish spirit and, within its wider format, produced an image known by in excess of a million people. Kenney Jones, Drummer with 'The Who' sits amongst Blake's wider contemplation of portraits of popular icon subjects including The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Kim Novak and Elvis, which as one of the main protagonists of British Pop Art formed an integral element of the artist's output.