Update summer 2011

I've updated the TV Guide section with some higher quality images including a scan of this 1990 Halloween cover.

I can't believe I missed Michael Sporn's excellent post on 'Energetically Yours'!  Director Dave Hilberman's son sent a batch of scans of original cels from the project-anyone who has seen the somewhat faded print on YouTube will be impressed by the vivid colour of the original cels.  Check them out here

Another animation historian Amid Amidi of Cartoon Brew recently put me in touch with another relative of Dave Hilberman who had unearthed this fun sketch in his garage.  I think it's safe to identify this as by Searle's hand and seems to be a discarded idea from the film.  I'll add all this new material to the Energetically Yours section.

I've added a couple of new images to the songbooks section here.

Several Lemon Hart Rum images added to this section.

I've started a new blog highlighting a special book I put together with the artists at Pixar for Ronald's 91st birthday. Check it out over here

Thanks to Cassie McGettigan who sent me this shot of her friend wearing a Searle design for the Met Opera, 1982.  Anybody with more info on these Rhinemaidens or Searle's work for the Met?

This sleeping Valkyrie was possibly made for the Metropolitan Opera in 1987.

'Guilio Cesare In Egitto' for the Metropolitan Opera, 1988

I stumbled upon this article reprinting a 1949 story by Freddy Bloom accompanied by a Searle illustration typical of that period.

Searle in Canada

Searle's trip to Canada in the 60s as reported on in the UK newspaper The Sun.

The report as originally published in full colour in HOLIDAY magazine, April 1964
(Thanks to Brendan Amphlet & Uli Meyer for the scans)

This would later lead to a commission from The Hudson's Bay Company to illustrate their calender, the drawings for which were subsequently published in the book THE GREAT FUR OPERA, 1970.

The Hudson’s Bay Company A TRICENTENNIAL REPORT Having worked like a beaver to overcome three centuries of plunging thermometers, recalcitrant Indians, and fierce competitors from Quebec and the U.S.A., it remains today the continent’s most durable trading enterprise By DAVID LAVENDER With drawings by RONALD SEARLE American Heritage Magazine, April 1970 Vol. 21, Issue 3.

More from HOLIDAY magazine here

Searle's Sustenance

I found some interesting Searle rarities in the this obscure collection: 'All the Art That's Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn't) Inside The New York Times Op-Ed Page' by Jerelle Kraus (Columbia University Press 2009)

'Searle had already sent us the perfect portrayal when an Op-Ed poem lamented our planet's thirst for petroleum products.'

"My drawing for 'Summer Poems' (1995) was killed by the Times because an editor (Howell Raines) detected an erection in it.  That's his fantasy of course, since nothing is more pure than the image of a man being sick in the street."

Updates

Michael Sporn has posted scans from THE FEMALE APPROACH over on his blog

Thanks to contributor Chris Bale I'm able to fill in the gaps with the 'Toujours Provence' drawings that appeared in the Sunday Telegraph magazine. Follow this link to see the scans.

Being Squeezed?

(Image courtesy of Derek Brazell at the AOI with permission for mRonald Searle)

"Ronald Searle, influential illustrator and AOI Patron, has created a new image to help the Pro-Action campaigning committee promote its aims. It is part of our new ‘Being Squeezed?’ advert."


The AOI

Ronald Searle Suite

Cartoon Brew recently picked up on my article on Energetically Yours.  The comments section threw up some interesting leads . . .

Magazine Illustration 3: Argosy

Argosy  March 1961  'The Fastest Pen in the West' 

Argosy (UK) [v26 # 4, April 1965]  Searle in Paris


More Ronald Searle Magazine Illustration

Part 1 TV Guide

Part 2 HOLIDAY 

Morbid Anatomies

Perhaps inspired by this 1950 Lilliput illustration Searle's 'Morbid Anatomies' first appeared in Holiday magazine

HOLIDAY magazine February 1958

HOLIDAY magazine April 1961

Searle's agent was forced to threaten legal action when the series was later ripped off for a print campaign advertising London Fog overcoats.   Vogue Magazine was good enough to commission the artist himself to produce this variation. . .

. . . as was HOLIDAY magazine.

"I found this Ronald Searle illustration, which accompanies a tongue-in-cheek article on Southern mores and manners by North Carolina–born author Frances Gray Patton, in the November 1959 issue of Holiday magazine. . ."


http://southernontheinside.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/morbid-anatomy-of-a-southern-belle/#comment-254

Anatomy of an Antiquarian Bookseller

'Anatomy of an Amateur Golfer' 

Travel & Leisure Magazine 1972

The Morbid Anatomy was subsequently appropriated by other cartoonists.

Cartoon Museum, London