Unseen artworks by original Beatle go on display

Four artworks by one of the founding members of The Beatles are going on display to the public for the first time.

The pieces, created by the band's original bass player, Stuart Sutcliffe, have been unveiled at Liverpool Beatles Museum.

Sutcliffe joined the band after meeting John Lennon at art school in Liverpool and travelled to Hamburg, Germany, to perform with them.

He left the group in 1961 to concentrate on his art career but died the following year, aged 21.

Four of his works have been loaned to the museum by Hereward Harrison, a close friend of Sutcliffe's sister, Pauline, who died in 2019.

He said she had given him the pieces as presents over their 50 years of friendship and he had them framed and kept them on his wall.

Harrison, 82, decided to put them on public display after a conversation at a party with someone who suggested he should contact the museum.

"Pauline would be delighted. She would be so pleased I was taking them back to Liverpool," he said.

The artworks include a sketch of people on a bridge, created when Sutcliffe was a student at the Liverpool College of Art, and three abstract pieces from his time working and studying in Hamburg.

"Most people are interested in the Beatles connection and I like The Beatles but there are two stories here, that he happened to be a Beatle but also about him as an artist," he said.

"He is famous because he was a Beatle but his real talent was art."

Harrison met Pauline Sutcliffe when they were both working as social workers in Brixton, London, in the 1960s and they became firm friends.

He said Sutcliffe, who wrote a book about her brother and organised exhibitions of his art, had "kept her brother's memory alive".

The items are the latest exhibits to go on display at the Mathew Street museum owned by Roag Best, brother of original Beatles drummer Pete Best.

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