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.
Above we can observe in the crowd on the left Searle's technique of scratching into the ink work. He would often do this to hair to give an extra feeling of depth when reproduced smaller in magazines. We can see it too in the next image to define the raindrops.
A couple months back I hooked up with fellow Searle fan Pete Western for a visit to the Prints & Drawings dept. at the British Museum in London. They hold the entire collection of the original drawings for Searle's 'The Rakes Progress'. There are several boxes of drawings & we only had time to look through a couple. The museum allowed us to photograph the drawings for personal use only as the copyright resides with the artist. Mr Searle granted me permission to publish the photos so I hope the British Museum is OK with this post.
It was enlightening to see the original artwork. The printed pages tend to lose a lot of the nuance of Searle's drawings. But in the photographs you can see the various media & techniques he used.
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. 
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!
