Newly Unearthed John Lennon Drawings Make Their Public Debut

A group of roughly 240 drawings made by John Lennon and Stephen Verona in the 1960s is on public view in Liverpool for the first time, offering a rare look at a little-known corner of Beatles visual culture. The works, now installed in a temporary three-month display at the Liverpool Beatles Museum, were rediscovered at auction in London by pop culture memorabilia specialist Joseph Robert O'Donnell.

The drawings were created for“She Said So,” an animated lyric film built around the Beatles' 1964 song“I Feel Fine.” According to Verona's recollection, the project began almost by chance, after he and Lennon started doodling together on a paper tablecloth in a London club. Lennon later met Verona in New York, where the two worked in his kitchen, smoking and coloring in cartoon images designed by Verona.

The finished film went on to circulate widely, screening at international film festivals and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It also won several awards, including the CINE Golden Eagle. The original film reel is now held by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. while Verona retained the drawings themselves.

In 2000, he consigned the complete set to Christie's New York, where it sold for $58,750 before the works were dispersed. Among the most recognizable sheets now reunited are drawings bearing the phrases“baby says she's mine” and“in love with her,” lines that will be familiar to devoted Beatles listeners.

The Liverpool presentation gives these works a new context: not as isolated memorabilia, but as evidence of how Lennon's image-making extended beyond music into a collaborative, experimental visual language. For Beatles scholars and collectors alike, the display restores a missing chapter in the band's cultural afterlife.

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