The artistic side of the Fifth Beatle

Aug 22 2008 by Vicky Anderson, Liverpool Daily Post

The artistic side of the Fifth Beatle

Vicky Anderson talks to Stuart Sutcliffe’s sister about a new exhibition of his work

A MAJOR retrospective of the work of Stuart Sutcliffe has gone on display in the city this week.

Focusing on the accomplishments of Sutcliffe the artist, rather than his notoriety as a former Beatle, it shows a number of examples of his paintings as a student at Liverpool School of Art, alongside his later work in Abstract Expressionism as he developed his style.

Three years in the planning, it has been made possible through the loan of dozens of his works from the Sutcliffe estate, held by his younger sister, Pauline.

Although there have been a number of small exhibitions of the artist’s work in the city over the years, this is the biggest retrospective staged in Liverpool in 40 years.

“I think, over the years, Stuart has come to represent some kind of romantic ideal,” Pauline says.

“First of all, he was beautiful looking, secondly he was enormously talented, and thirdly, he was extremely young when he died, and that’s why I think he has been taken to people’s hearts.”

Sutcliffe went to Park View primary school, in Huyton, and Prescot Grammar School before joining the Liverpool School of Art and meeting John Lennon.

The rest, as they say, is Liverpool history.

The original “Fifth Beatle”, Sutcliffe was a member alongside Lennon – first known as Johnny and the Moon Dogs, then The Silver Beatles, before settling on the name that stuck.

He became the bass player by fluke, after buying his instrument with money he earned selling one of his paintings in the John Moores exhibition in 1959 – beating friend Rod Murray, who was making a guitar by hand (which can be seen in the exhibition), to the post.

Sutcliffe is synonymous with The Beatles’ Hamburg heyday, where they toured in the early 1960s.

After a second tour, he stayed in Germany after falling for photographer Astrid Kirschherr and studied for a Masters in art at the city’s art college, where he was tutored by pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi.

Always considered something of a tortured, haunted soul, he died of a brain haemorrhage there, aged just 21.

The retrospective marks the first special exhibition for the new Victoria Gallery & Museum, which has only been open to the public since July, following an £8.6m restoration of the stunning red- brick building off Brownlow Hill.

Of the work, curator Matthew Clough says: “They taught a lot more technically in those days, and students would spend a while finding their own style by copying other people.

“You can see in his early abstract work how he is trying to explore that language and what he wanted to do with it.