HP Full Irish

HP Sauce & A full Irish Breakfast

40 x 50cms

Painted on a 50mm deep box canvas

This was painted for a merchandising collaboration with Heinz UK in 2014. The merchandise was in BHS, ASAD, John Lewis, ARGOS, Sainsbury's and multiple outlets in the UK and Europe. There was none for the Irish Market but it filtered in over the years through ARGOs and TK MAXX. The merchandise ended when Heinz UK was bought by Kraft a few years later. It was an amazing couple of years. 

This Original painting I thought was sold a long time ago and it was found over the weekend when I was moving studio. When I was painting the HP sauce for the first time, I could not believe that the WHOLE of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben were on the label. I'd really only noticed the HP. It was a huge amount of work to paint and it is why when I painted another one I put the bottle inside a bacon sandwich so I did not have to paint the Parliament again. 

Did you know that the HP stands for Houses of Parliament because it was used in the restaurant there in the late 20th century

Former labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson, was said to love HP sauce so much, that people began referring to it as ‘Wilson’s gravy’. 

Also when the HP factory was moved to the Netherlands the had a wake for the sauce and put the HP bottles into a coffin!.