France...

Burnt out after a dozen years of fierce productivity across several mediums Searle left everything behind in London and fled to Paris. Journalist and author Martin Amis caught up with him in the French capital for this profile of the artist in the Telegraph magazine on 1978. Ronald was by then settled in the south of France with his second wife Monica.

 The article states Searle earned 25,000 pounds annually throughout the fifties (equivalent to 800,000 today) and bought 'a mansion' which must mean the house at 32A Newton Road. Read more on Searle's modern home studio here

Here he is photographed for Marseille magazine in 1963. Again the article displays a preoccupation with the sum of money he commands for a drawing.

Read my original Marseille post here

Marseille

The March 15th, 1963 edition of Marseille Magazine carried an intriguing profile of Searle accompanied by a couple of photos and a drawing I'd not seen elsewhere. The article states he was in the city on assignment for Life magazine to cover the trial of the 'pétanque gang' but missed the appointment due to being bedridden with flu since arriving in France. He made do with the testimony of lawyers, judges and press photographs.

' . . . pour assister, à Marseille, au procès du 'gang de la pétanque', il a traverse l'Atlantique, comme envoyé special du magazine 'Life'. Mais il a dû réaliser son reportage-dessiné à travers les témoignages des avocats, des juges, des journalistes at à l'aide de documents photographiques, une grippe l'ayant cloué au lit dès son arrivée en France.'

I don't think the drawings were ever published in Life but I believe these are the drawings Searle made. The pétanque players are in the collection of the Wilhelm Busch – Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und Zeichenkunst, Hanover.

This stunning panorama of the Marseille palais de justice is held at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at OSU, Columbus, Ohio. It's a large format drawing and Searle took great care with the likenesses of all the accused and the defender and prosecutor, noting their names along the bottom edge of the picture.

Signed and dated lower right. Caricatures identified by the artist: Voiron, Bonacorsi, Maitre Paoli (defense), A. Ceccaldi, Maitre Tramoni (defense), Donnat, Ricci, Quaranta, Bernasconi, Hugues, Bontempi, David, E. Ceccaldi, Alardon, Agaccio, Maitre Grisoli (defense)

The Billy Ireland Library also has this depiction of the judges presiding over the case: Gaudaire, Vincentelli (President), Lucciardi

 The article is somewhat obsessed with the artist's financial rewards since becoming 'le dessinateur le plus féroce du monde' stating that his drawings for French, American, English, Italian and German magazines reap at least 1,500 francs and that Life offered 10,000 francs for a drawing of Winston Churchill's last speech in Parliament  (a drawing of staggering detail that deserved the price).

The article estimates that in the past decade the Searle produced 3000 drawings which I can only conclude is no exaggeration after seeing so many in collections around the world.
Revealingly the last sentence drops this bombshell: 'his last humorous story was devoted to the US Department of Foreign Affairs. President Kennedy phoned him to ask him for three drawings : one for Nixon, one for (Secretary of State) Dean Rusk and one for himself.'
This was published in the December 1961 issue of Holiday magazine and one can only speculate as to which of those famous politicians chose which drawing . . . ?

BNF 1973

In 1973 Searle was honored by the Bibliothèque nationale de France,  Paris with a career retrospective- the only living non French artist to be recognized thus.

'In July 1971 Searle received two awards: the "Prize of Humour S.P.H" and the "Avignon City Medal". A few months later, he received the "Great Prize for Black Humour / Grandville". In 1972 he was awarded the "Prize Charles Huard for Press Cartoons". In the same year, crowning these French distinctions, the Bibliothèque Nationale [National Library] invited him to show a personal retrospective at the Cabinet des Estampes in 1973. Of course Searle agreed and became the first non-French living artist to be honored that way by this institution. Unfortunately, for economical reasons, the B.N. suggested that the catalog was just a list on sheets of paper. Searle’s cartoonist friend Jean-Pierre Desclozeaux was outraged, and so as to have a proper, fully illustrated and well documented catalog printed he founded the association "Les Amis de Ronald Searle" [Searle’s Friends] which collected funds and brought life to this book. 259 works were on display at the B.N. from January 26th to late March 1973. . . .

. . . The drawing reproduced on the front cover of the catalogue (here above) is one the three works stolen during the exhibition. The Bibliothèque Nationale having failed to insure itself against such troubles was obliged to acquire these works from the artist, who thus came to be officially “represented in the Bibliothèque Nationale”, as he later put it, “by three phantom pictures”.

-ecc Cartoon Books Club

The catalogue can be found on eBay or there is a digitized version online here.

Photo: Claudia Desclozeaux