Collector Richard Merkin, my Dear Friend, Has Died

[bh3443]

Barry,
Our prayers are with you and i added your friend to my prayer list as i attend Church almost every day.
So sad to see any of us lose close friends and family.
Take care and best regards,
Bill Hedin and family

[slidekellyslide]

My condolences and thoughts are with you Barry. Richard sounded like he was an interesting fellow.

edited to add: I found some stuff on him in Google and it looks like at least some of his artwork had a baseball theme.

http://www.gallery444.com/merkin_bio_page.htm

[barrysloate]

Thank you to all. In my haste I left out a most important fact of Richard's life: many of his paintings were about baseball. He did some amazing portraits and action shots of some of the game's greats. If someone is able to google "Richard Merkin, Haddad Gallery" there are numerous paintings of his, among them two of George and Harry Wright. Maybe someone can post them or any others here, as they are apropos to our thread about the Boston composite.

Yes, as Dan mentioned above about baseball.

[Matt]

My condolences.

[Jacklitsch]

Very touching tribute. Thank you for sharing and best wishes to his family.

[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

I am so sorry to hear of this. It would be very interesting to hear the Beatles story. I have read that each of the people featured of the Sgt. Pepper's cover had an influence on the lives of one or more of the Beatles. How is this the case with Richard?

[barrysloate]

Jodi- Richard never even met the Beatles. But he spent the summer of 1966 in England, and became friendly with an associate of Michael Cooper, the photographer who designed and shot the cover. All of the photographs used for the album were assembled, and then each of those pictures were glued to lifesize cardboard backings. After those figures were arranged as they would appear on the cover, the four Beatles came onto the set and stood in the center for the final photograph.

In the 1980's those cardboard figures went to auction- Richard gave me a copy of that catalog many years ago- and they sold for several thousand dollars each. Many of the people pictured did have some significance to the Beatles, but my guess is they did not know who Richard was.

Richard once showed me the actual photo used for the cover. It was originally full length, but was cropped from the shoulders up as it was used.

[base_ball]

Merkin, a true renaissance man, was often mentioned as one of America's best-dressed men back in the day. In his later years, a pillbox baseball cap replaced a derby atop his head. I only met him twice, but he was quite the fellow.