John Lennon’s Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite Poster
2017 · Atlanta
by LENNON, JOHN
Atlanta: ThePropSmith, 2017. On January 31, 1967, John Lennon was in Sevenoaks, Kent, shooting the music videos for The Beatles songs, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. Between takes he wandered into an antique shop and found a framed 1843 antique circus poster, Pablo Fanques Circus Royal, promoting a charity performance - Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite, which he purchased for 10 shillings. Lennon hung it on his living room wall for years, and it inspired him with the aid of Paul McCartney to use the text of the poster to create his famous song of the same name for the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Lennon’s original poster complete with woodcut illustration engravings is now believed to be in the possession of Sean Lennon. No other original poster is known to have survived. There are two known photographs of John Lennon standing next to the poster in his living room. There have been several attempts to make a reproduction of the poster with varying degrees of success. The reproduction poster we have here for sale is remarkable, the most accurate yet accomplished, painstakingly made using hours of work with computers. The poster is printed by hand in black ink on 100lb Recycled Speckletone French Paper. (Inventory #: 15469J)