Searle the art instructor

 

A fascinating item at auction recently reveals Searle to be a mentor to a fellow artist while incarcerated in Changi Gaol by the Japanese in WWII. I'd never heard of him teaching in this capacity before - it's definitely his hand-writing - but he did give me pointers on sketching when I met him and showed him my sketchbooks.

Searle's own art training was cut short when he enlisted. On the long voyage by sea to Singapore he drew what he encountered - Polish sailors, Mombasa, India and kept drawing as a prisoner. He turned his incarceration into a kind of art school experience, documenting the incidents in the camp, sketching caricatures of fellow inmates and designing theater play backdrops and programs, Christmas cards and also singular 'magazines' that were disseminated between the men.

'Searle (Ronald) British Cartoonist (1920-2011) and Cotterell (Thomas George). A two sided als in blue ink from Searle to Cotterell dated June 14 1945 from Changi Gaol (Singapore) in which he artistically criticises Cotterell's portrait of his wife (watercolour profile on paper 135 x 115mm signed and dated verso '45). Both laminated for preservation, with transcripts.

Note: Both men were Japanese Prisoners of War and were held at Changi Gaol '

Written in June 1945 only months before the end of the war Searle had returned to Changi from his horrific stint up the Malay peninsula on the Death Railway. He couches the critique with a modest take-down of his own abilities then the feedback is necessarily frank and honest.