Lunch with the Searles

After my previous visit with Mr Searle which lasted barely 2 hours I was of course keen to meet him again & discuss his work. The more I find out about Searle's art the more questions seem to arise. I was delighted to receive an invitation to lunch from Mr & Mrs Searle which was appointed for the 20th June & they suggested I bring a friend too.
I asked my good pal Uli Meyer to come along. I've worked with Uli a lot in commercial animation and, like me, he's a huge Searle fan. Uli's a tremendous artist and I knew that Mr Searle would be interested to see Uli's work too.


We met at noon in the Searles favourite restaurant & Ronald immediately got the champagne & conversation flowing. Over several subsequent bottles of wine & delicious courses from the excellent menu we talked about myriad subjects. Of course drawing & art was prevalent but it was fascinating also to hear Ronald & Monica's tales of travelling, family history, famous friends & acquaintances and battles with ill health. Both are in their 80s now (or 'the late afternoon of their lives' as Monica likes to put it) but they retain an exuberant vitality. Generous & welcoming they made both Uli & I feel like old friends.




I asked Ronald of all the far flung destinations that the HOLIDAY assignments took them which was their favourite. Rather than exotic Hawaii or Morocco they said it was Alaska. Despite the sub-zero temperatures it was the friendliness of the people that made the trip memorable. They told us a strange story of being greeted by the proprietor of a remote store who told them he had been expecting them. Noticing Searle's name in the ledger book he enquired if he was the Ronald Searle. On affirmation of this he revealed that he was a huge fan and possessed a full collection of Searle's books. Not only that but he had a bottle of champagne on ice and a sketchbook ready for Searle to draw the man's dog!

Another amusing anecdote the Searles told was when they discovered the hard way that seal skins are cured with urine! They went to a cinema one evening & the combined heat & over-powering ammonia saw that they left after 5 minutes!

Ever the fashionista Monica had an Eskimo jacket tailored for her trimmed with wolverine fur. Later at their house she took out the jacket to show us. After 40 years it was still in perfect condition & thankfully smelt fine. She even let me try it on-it can withstand temperatures well below -20 & wearing it in summertime haute Provence meant I was soon feeling very toasty!


Good news for Searle fans is that a book is in the works based on the HOLIDAY sketches. These have been collected before in 'FROM FROZEN NORTH TO FILTHY LUCRE' but was not definitive. The Hawaii drawings were not included & most of the sketches from Morocco remain unpublished.

Searle visit 2

Uli Meyer and I both have brief accounts of our afternoon spent with the Searles last weekend. See Uli's blog & mine to read more. I'm working on an extended report to appear here soon . . .

I've also updated the Festival of Britain and Punch Theatre sections.

Mr Searle was kind enough to send me this recent photo taken by local photographer Dominique Postera. He turned 89 this year & looks in fine form. Next weekend I'll be visiting Mr Searle again - I'm excited to have another chance to discuss his work & drawing in general.

St.Trinians 2

At the Cannes Film Festival this year Ealing Studios were promoting the follow-up to their St. Trinians 're-imagining'. Despite being scant relation to Searle's original creation the film was apparently successful enough to warrant a sequel.



Of course with the title sequence there was great opportunity to animate Searle's original designs but the title animation of the first film bore little resemblance to Searle's characters. Apparently the production company weren't actually allowed to use the original St Trinians designs. However this time it looks like they're using Searle's actual characters. I inverted the image above where you can clearly see the banner uses one of Searle's original drawings.

The Diverting History of John Gilpin

The drawings from the film Searle contributed to for the'Painter & Poet' series were later released as an illustrated adaptation of Cowper's 'The Diverting History of John Gilpin'.

I'll start posting the images from the book, one a day.

Festival Of Britain

Searle was involved in the 1951 Festival Of Britain in several aspects, not the least of which was his contribution to the 'Painter & Poet' series of films produced by Halas & Batchelor. Searle created an adaptation of Cowper's 'The Diverting History of John Gilpin'. The still drawings he produced were later released as a book.





'. . . As previously mentioned, the main attraction at the Telekinema was the showcasing of new cinematic The Painter and Poet series of four black and white art films, each under ten minutes long was produced by the British animators John Halas and Joy Batchelor. Artists including Mervyn Peake, Henry Moore and Ronald Searle created visual impressions of eight poems, narrated by such luminaries of the acting profession as Michael Redgrave, John Laurie, Eric Portman and Stanley Holloway. It was recognised that the films were ‘agreeable and enterprising [and that] they illustrate some of the possibilities of the technique even if, occasionally, they fail to realise them’. The most liked was Ronald
Searle’s interpretation of the William Cowper poem The Story of John Gilpin. One critic referred to Searle’s drawing as ‘so dynamic, it is difficult to realise that no picture on the screen is moving’.

from
Film and the Festival of Britain 1951 This article by Sarah Easen, Cataloguer, BUFVC and Curator of the NFT Festival of Britain Season and Exhibition, highlights the spectrum of films made specifically for the Festival of Britain celebrations in 1951. Over twenty films were produced including a biopic on the life of William Friese-Greene, documentaries by Humphrey Jennings and Basil Wright as well as several Norman McLaren experimental 3-D films.


Festival of Britain: Woolly Smothers M.P to Herbert Morrison: “And what’s more Sir – I still think it would be a waste of money if it weren’t such a success!”.
Pen and ink. 8x8 inches. Signed and inscribed. 1951.



Roland Emett at the Festival of Britain
signed and dated 'Ronald Searle 1952' (lower left), and inscribed 'Roland Emett' (lower centre)
pen and black ink, unframed
14 1/4 x 10 1/4 in. (36.2 x 26 cm.)

















The hard-copy Catalogue of the 1951 Festival of Britain Sherlock Holmes Exhibition contains a number of illustrations by Ronald Searle
Sherlock Holmes Catalogue of an Exhibition Held at Abbey House, Baker Street, London May - September 1951
(Public Libraries Committee of the Borough of St. Marylebone for the Festival of Britian, 1951. Frontispiece drawing by Ronald Searle of a reconstruction of the living-room at 221B Baker Street. )


FILMS & THE FESTIVAL BY SIR GERALD BARRY, DIRECTOR-GENERAL FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN*

*Sight & Sound magazine "Films in 1951: A Special Publication on British Films and Film-Makers" for the Festival of Britain.

"PAINTER AND POET"..a novel experiment, these series of films came about when a number of modern artists were asked to illustrate a poem of their own choosing: the finished films combine the drawings or paintings, a narrator or singer of the poem, and specially composed music. The artists who have contributed to the films are Henry Moore, Ronald Searle, Michael Ayrton, Mervyn Peake, John Minton, Michael Rothenstein, Barbara Jones and Michael Warre. Sponsored by the British Film Institute, "Painter and Poet" was produced by the John Halas company in association with Joan Maude and Michael Warre, who originated the idea and devised the script. The music is by Matyas Seiber.

SIGHT AND SOUND Number Volume 20 No. 2 Date: June 1951
Cover Illustration: JUDY GARLAND - THE HARVEY GIRLS
Articles with Illustrations: PAINTER AND POET - RONALD SEARLE, JOHN MINTON & MERVYN PEAKE; CANNES FESTIVAL; LA RONDE; AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS - CAROL REED; JUDY GARLAND; SOVIET CINEMA'S CHANGE OF HEART



Punch magazine issued a special souvenir edition published April 30th 1951. With twice as many pages as a regular issue the magazine features several Searle illustrations. In this terrific colour painting below we can see Searle working in the styles of great British artists such as William Blake and Henry Moore.


This full page spread features crams in dozens of the most well known British actors and actresses of the day.

For more of Searle's Punch Theatre work follow this link.

The Big City or The New Mayhew

Searle's "London" book, used as a starting point Henry Mayhew's 'London Labour and London Poor'. Above is the artwork for the original edition released through Searle's own publishing outfit Perpetua.

The sketch below, in blue ink on the title-page, illustrates an elderly man up a ladder, pasting up a poster (the printed book title), inscribed "Embellished by Ronald for Jean, the right hand of Perpetua."
(From the collection of the late Jean Ellsmoor, who acted as Searle's secretary from 1956 to 1977.)
(The Big City or the New Mayhew, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY, WITH ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATION, on the title-page, inscribed by author and illustrator, illustrations, publisher's cloth, dust-jacket, 4to, Perpetua, 1958)






'Alex Atkinson came up with the notion of inhabiting the style of Henry Mayhew, one of the Victorian founders of Punch, and producing a modern equivalent of his London Labour and the London Poor. There being less outright shocking squalor in mid-Fifties London-less interesting squalor, perhaps-Atkinson concentrated instead on a class more characteristic of the age: those pathetically defiant strugglers of inner-suburban bedsitter-land, where ambition finally learns to die . . .

. . . With few but striking exceptions, such as a most wondrously innocuous vicar, Searle's character-studies have in common a projecting lower lip that tells of stubborness giving way slowly to misery . . .




. . . The 'New Mayhew' pieces, later to be collected by Perpetua under the title The Big City, operate right on the line between humour and melancholy; textually and graphically, they tread it with a delicacy that now seems to belong as securely to the long-ago as Mayhew himself. To be made to laugh at the 'type', and yet feel sorry for the reality it stands for, is more than one expects from such a book'.

Ronald Searle by Russell Davies






Encyclopaedia Salesman

(Thanks to Elliot Elam for contributing scans)