Update

 Kenneth Bird aka Fougasse was art editor at Punch during the 40s then later became editor of the magazine when Searle worked for it.  An accomplished cartoonist in his own right his work became familiar to the British public with a series of wartime posters. An exhibition of this work opens at the Cartoon Museum this week.




I've updated the Advertising section,  Take One Toad , Dick Deadeye,   Investigator and LemonHart Rum.

Searle in Hannover

'What! Already?' Searle at 90 the Wilhelm-Busch museum in Hanover is the largest exhibition this year to mark Ronald Searle's birthday.
Last week I had the oppurtunity to see the show and explore the Searle archive with fellow Searle fan Uli Meyer.  The exhibition is unmissable for Searle fans; almost 200 works on show plus several sketchbooks, posters and interesting photographs and paraphenalia.

Many thanks to Ronald Searle, Frau Dr Gisela Vetter Liebenov and Uli Meyer for making the trip possible.

For German speaking readers here are some links to articles about the exhibition  here , here and here.

Brit cartoonist Mike Roberts has posted his thoughts on visiting the exhibition here

A Visit To The Seaside

The Cultural Clippings blog recently posted some very interesting examples of early colour Searle illustrations. Originally published in the August 1947 issue of Lilliput Magazine.

Early examples of colour reportage, they're quite different to Searle's later colour work for HOLIDAY magazine.  Obviously less overtly 'cartoony', stylistically they're closer to the drawings of the time by Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland.

Many thanks to Chris for allowing me to re-publish these here on the Perpetua blog.  He also sent me another Searle spot illustration from the same issue which I've posted on my Lilliput blog here.

Latest news

 A second volume of Robert Forbes' poems is to be published in the autumn again illustrated by Ronald Searle. Let's have a Bite! will be available soon from Overlook Press.  They previously collaborated on Beastly Feasts!

Searle has contributed a deck-chair design to a project run by the Royal Parks Foundation in London. The designs will also be on display at a pavilion in Shanghai Botanical Gardens in China. Click to enlarge the image left to see Searle's witty take on this year's theme- 'seeds'.

Read more on the project's website here.

The BBC ran a story here.


(Thanks to Stephen Nadler)

In the comments section Searle aficionado 'Docnad' pointed out the deckchair design's similarity to a New Yorker cover from June 1991.

One more exhibition for Ronald Searle's 90th birthday year!

Searle fans living in Devon will get a chance to see a reduced version of the retrospective held at the Cartoon Museum in London this summer.  It's on at the Burton Art Gallery in Bideford in Devon from the 25th September to November 1st.

 I've updated the Punch theatre section, published St. Trinians part 4 and added a YouTube link to the the Scrooge page.  I've added a search function at the bottom of the blog for easier browsing.

Toujours Provence

In 1991 Searle illustrated a series of articles by Peter Mayle in the Telegraph Magazine.

3 Toujours Provence 'The Lost Dog'

pen and black ink, coloured crayon and watercolour, heightened with white, with scratching out,16 x 21¾ in. (40.7 x 55.2 cm.)

13 April 1991.

4 Toujours Provence 'The forest became thicker and the track narrower'

pen and black ink, coloured crayon and watercolour heightened with white, 16 7/8 x 21 5/8 in. (42.6 x 55.2 cm.)

20 April 1991.

(Photographed from the original artwork)

'Going native'

27th April 1991

Glyndebourne

Original artwork

Creative Spirit: Hotel Aiglon

"Today in the Creative Spirit section, enjoy a drawing signed by a customer who left a deep footprint at the Hotel Aiglon. This is the British drawer and cartoonist Ronald Searle who designed this flying cat “Chataiglon”. . .
Mr and Mrs Searle are loyal customers of the hotel Aiglon for 35 years. So loyal that a suite has been renamed “the Searle Suite”.  The artist has offered three lithographs for this room which confer a strong and unique personality to the place.
This article is also a way to thank Mr and Mrs Searle for their loyalty."

From the esprit-de-france website June 9, 2010

THOSE DARING YOUNG MEN IN THEIR JAUNTY JALOPIES

In 1968 Searle was hired to create the title sequence for Ken Annakin's 'MONTE CARLO OR BUST!' - a follow up of sorts to 'THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES'- for which Searle had also created a memorable title sequence.

I'm grateful to Mr Searle for allowing me to photograph & present here pages from the original sketchbook he kept on the set of the film.  I'd presented a slideshow of these images at the various presentations I made on Searle's work in animation & film titles. Here for the first time on the blog you can browse through his sketches and notes made while following the production on location around Europe. . .

With his customary meticulous attention to detail Searle records the duration of his trip between the 25th July to the 10th August 1968.  The film was released the following year.

In the photo below Ronald is sketching at the Rome location accompanied by Monica and director Ken Annakin.  I presume the notebook he's holding is the same one I photographed 40 years later. He's probably making the sketch shown above.

Here we can see Searle starting to explore the action of the title sequence.

Searle produced the final titles with production outfit TRICKFILM, with whom he also created the title sequences for Ronald Neame's 1970 film SCROOGE.

The rest of the drawings in the sketchbook were published as a tie-in, illustrated book of the film. They include Searle's sketches of the principal actors including Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Eric Sykes, Tony Curtis and Gert Frobe.

The roving artist made sure he was on set for the scene where the girls stop to bathe in a river!

Searle even caught the screenwriter of the film, Jack Davies, on set.

You can read a well illustrated review of the film here.

Art of the Title on Searle here and the title sequence here.

Bamboo

Somebody wrote to me recently enquiring whether it was true that Searle drew with a 'bamboo pen'.
There's an interesting thread on Searle's use of the bamboo pen over at the Illustration Art blog, suggesting Searle first dicovered this tool as a prisoner of the Japanese during WW11.  The variety of mark-making in Searle's work indicates that he uses a variety of tools, nibs, fountain pens brushes etc.
Artists often wonder how did Searle achieve those marvellous results- what tool did he use? The answer is probably all of them.  In this photo below from the display case at the Cartoon Museum's Searle exhibition we can see the different media he used, including a bamboo pen, a variety of dip pens, the wood stain used as ink early on & the famous Mont Blanc fountain pen.