Paris Sketchbook (1950)

 

Original ed. 1950. US ed. 1957

'Pont Neuf'

'Assemblée Nationale'

'Oscar Wilde's Tomb, Père-Lachaise Cemetery'

'St. Paul'

'Montmartre'

'Bookseller, Rive gauche'

'Place Dauphine'

This stunning piece is not in the 'Paris Sketchbook' it appeared later in 'Holiday' magazine I believe. 

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

Paris

Mike Lynch posted a Searle drawing of Montmatre on his cartooning blog which reminded me to dig out this epic colour version published in the September 1960 issue of HOLIDAY magazine as part of a feature called 'Paris in the Summer'.

 

 Ronald first drew the Place du Tertre (below) while visiting Paris with his first wife Kaye Webb during their collaboration on the 'Paris Sketchbook'.

Here's the rest of the HOLIDAY feature-

Ronald drew the Opera Garniér for the 'Paris Sketchbook' (below). He evidently found a vantage point sitting at the Café de la Paix across the square.

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