Fake Searles pop up on the art market with regularity but their deficiencies are glaringly obvious to the trained eye of a Searle aficionado. This poor copy of his Ian Fleming cartoon is on sale this month at Rosebery's Auctions.
The rear view:
It has previously passed through Abbott & Holder Auctions, whom I've previously alerted to a fake but they're too snooty to accept my concerns.
Here's the real drawing below. The superior draughtsmanship is obvious revealing the "copy" to be quite sloppy- look at the lazy rendering in the fur, the size of the facial features, the angle of the arm touching the ground etc.
Searle was meticulous in cataloguing his work. I found this clipping in his files at the Searle Archive in Hanover.
The archive also holds his rough sketch.
See more fake Searles here and here and here
