Searle in Colour

Searle made his name of course with his inky, scratchy black and white drawings but from his early career he demonstrated a unique command of colour too.  The palettes he used were often unusual but very striking.

'A Trip to the Seaside' for Lilliput Magazine 1947

'Festival of Britain' for Punch magazine 1951

Searle mastered these intricate tableau colour spreads. It's a joy to scrutinize the details of these pictures.

Fortune magazine 1956

Fortune magazine 1961

The 'red sky  at night' of the Punch cover above contrasts beautifully with the almost turquoise grass.
It may have inspired the colour palette of the next piece but it was actually published the year after so unlikely.  Compare this seaside image with the Lilliput piece a decade earlier-Searle's stylistic range is remarkable.

Punch 14th August 1957

Auction

Ralph Spurrier of Post Mortem Books informs me of an upcoming auction of original Searle artwork that readers may be interested in.

"I knew Ronald for very many years via his wife Mo who was a customer of mine – she was an avid reader of crime fiction – and I was invited down to Tourtour to visit with them. The occasion was MOST convivial! A few years later,when I opened a bookshop in London I approached Ronald to ask him if he would produce a colophon for me. Well, he not only produced a colophon but a whole slew of alphabet letters consisting of figures in the shape of letters, daggers, guns, gravestones (the letter T) which he suggested I could mix and match to use for whatever purpose (shop sign, letterhead etc etc) I wanted. Well, my business partner  - to cut a long story short – didn’t like them at all and they never got used. They were consigned to the portfolio and shoved away for over 20 years.  Eventually I resigned from the shop (some years later it went bust) and returned back to the country a wiser – if slightly poorer -  man."

  ". . . I had forgotten all about the RS material until a house move a couple of years ago unearthed them.  With some reluctance I have now decided to auction the material. I don’t desperately need the money but if I should die prematurely then this material could be lost for all time which would be a great shame. You may be interested yourself and perhaps your readers may well be interested..."

To view the catalogue go to the website of Dominic Winter Auctions 
{item 374 on page 118 of the 6th February catalogue}

Poland 1948

The year after their trip around Yugoslavia Searle and fellow illustrator Paul Hogarth visited Poland to record the post war devastation.

'In August 1948, Searle was traveling across Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland where he and Paul Hogarth, with a small group of sketchers, were sneaked in the Intellectuals’ Congress for World Peace at Wroclaw.'

-ECC

'In the summer of 1948 I arranged a trip to Poland.  Besides Ronald Searle, I invited the art historian, Millicent Rose.  Ronald again displayed incredible versatility in tackling a wide variety of subject matter.  We stayed in Prague en route for several days and drew the picturesque lanes of the Mala Strana below Hradcany Castle.  We visited in succession Warsaw, Gdansk, Cracow, Zakopane and Katowice, ending our stay in Wroclaw'  -Paul Hogarth

'The offer of another trip to Eastern Europe came as a most welcome interruption.  Czechoslovakia and Poland were the destinations this time.  To Searle it was a revelation just to get as far as Nuremberg and form, in the ruins of the city, some idea of the European conflict he had missed.  Czechoslovakia proved frustrating.  Searle did meet the sculptor Franta Belsky there, and made another great friend, but the queues for Polish visas in Prague were impossibly long.  Searle and Hogarth might have spent their whole time waiting had they not met a film-maker called Ludwik Perski - a friend of their common acquaintance, Feliks Topolski - who happened to be shooting some footage inside the Polish Embassy. He inventively proposed to the bureaucrats a flattering scene wherein the visas of some distinguished visiting artists would be stamped; and so Searle made his European film debut in the act of 'being offered a cigarette, being shaken warmly by the hand, and miming the reception of a visa from the hand of the Vice-Consul'.  The real visa came two days later, and Searle and Hogarth continued on their way. . . '    (-Russell Davies)

'. . . they both worked very hard on this journey.  Hogarth had an assignment from Coal magazine, so they went down the mines in Silesia.  They toured Krakow and Gdansk, and witnessed a Warsaw that 'didn't exist'; and they were sneaked in, along with a small army of sketchers, to witness the Intellectuals' Congress at Wroclaw, an event attended by an odd troupe of international talents, from Picasso to Ehrenburg, Fadeyev to A.J.P.Taylor.   Since the Soviet Union was at that moment breaking off relations with the United States over an extradition matter, the proceedings were more notable for controversy than enlightenment, but the sensation of standing on a political and philosophical borderline was exciting.  Searle returned to England feeling that the journey had been the most important thing to happen to him intellectually since his imprisonment, an experience he could now place in a fuller cultural context.  Having visited Auschwitz and seen what intelligent, cultured members of the European tradition were capable of, he came to distinguish in his own mind between excusable and inexcusable barbarity.  'Scientific elimination,' he decided, 'is quite different from someone beating a thousand people to death because they can't communicate.  It's not the same attitude.  And so the preference was there: I'd rather have Japanese fascists than Nazis.'   (-Russell Davies)

'The extent of the destruction in Poland stunned us.  In Warsaw, the Old Town's once-exquisite churches and grandiose palaces - indeed, any buildings of distinction - lay in ruins.  Yet Ronald executed a series of dramatic scenes drawn on the spot in his famous 'ink', which wasn't ink at all but Stephen's Liquid Stain!  He may have sounded like the British actor, David Niven, but ih his company I witnessed at first hand the degree of creative interpretation that only the artist can bring to pictorial reporting. '  -Paul Hogarth

'You and Ronald Searle went to Poland in 1948 and were astounded by the extent of the destruction. At the Congress of Intellectuals for Peace, you drew luminaries ‘making fools of themselves by siding with the Soviets against the Americans’ – as you put it. Did you write that with hindsight or had disillusionment with Communism begun even then?


That’s hindsight. What I did see and what I remember feeling was that these people who were communists has so much vanity, the same amount of vanity and egotism as anybody else, and that was quite a revelation.

You speak of Searle with admiration as by far the superior craftsman, and you hoped that travel would bring out the artist in you. You say at one point: ‘Like a Christian pilgrim of old, i sought spiritual adventure.’ Can you explain what you meant by ‘spiritual’ in that context?

I tried to find things that would move me. I tried to find issues that I could draw, and dramatize, but it wasn’t until I went to Greece during the general’s regime that I found a theme which I could interpret – the scenes of suffering outside the prisons in Athens, the political prisoners, and the lines of women carrying food parcels.  Communists had done terrible things in Greece, but the generals were also very harsh and I only saw that one side. Experience of life, that’s what I was seeking, so that I could develop as an artist.'

Interview with Hogarth

'At Janov, near Katowice, we entered the grimy world of the Silesian coalfield, where fiercely mustached miners hacked and shoveled in almost total darkness.  The air was thick with coal dust and the temperature well above 80°F.'

-Paul Hogarth

View of Wieczack Mine, near Silesia, Poland 

Searle told me they didn't quite get to meet their idol Picasso although Feliks Topolski was able to get close enough to dash out some sketches of the artist.

Happy New Year 2013!

Welcome to 2013 folks!  As a special New Year treat for all you Searle fans I'll post one month a day from Searle's 1960 calendar . . .

Happy Holidays!

This lovely Christmas card must've been the inspiration for the Puffin Songbook or vice versa.

Beastly Books

'Beast Friends Forever' is available from U.S. publishers Overlook Press. I'm assuming it's the American edition of 'Beastly Romances' ?

ROBERT L. FORBES AND RONALD SEARLE (Overlook Duckworth £12.99)

It is one the biggest scandals of our Honours system that Ronald Searle was not knighted. I suppose the bureaucrats in Whitehall thought he was ‘only a cartoonist’. Yet he was on the high shelf with graphic satirists like Hogarth, Gillray and Cruikshank.

Searle was a major artist - a million times superior to Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin or any of those. I am proud to say the cover he did for my book What Am I Still Doing Here? was his final commission. In a typically generous gesture, he gave me the original painting.

As for this particular book, all we are told is that ‘the drawings happily were completed a while ago’. What a delight they are. Flirting elephants, strutting peacocks and blushing peahens, intertwined snakes, a boar serenading a simpering sow.

The drawings are so sunny and romantic - amazing to think that Searle was in his 90s when he died, and had once been a Prisoner of War in Singapore, witnessing and enduring the worst Japanese atrocities. He had every right to be bitter and twisted, but was the opposite. A genius.

Daily Mail

Remembering Ronald Searle pt2

In February 2008 Ronald had agreed to meet me in a couple of months but the Searles' annual visit to Paris for health treatment postponed this to September. I was of course very excited to finally get the opportunity but it also impressed upon me just how frail they may be at this late stage of their lives.

The date in September came around and one Saturday morning (all meetings with Ronald were on Saturdays-he was busy with work during the week) I once again made the not un-pleasurable drive from the Cote d'Azur up to the Var.

I arrived in Tourtour maybe an hour before our scheduled appointment and walked around the village rehearsing what to say to a legend when he opens his front door.  In the event it wasn't Ronald who answered my knock but a French lady who I took to be the Searles' home help.  She led me through to the kitchen in the back.  The walls were modestly adorned with artwork-not too many pieces and not Searles' own.  Just a small collection of historical caricatures by Gillray and Cruickshank.

I stood in the kitchen and waited.  Chez Searle was a warren-like abode, expanded over decades by combining four adjoining properties. Ronald entered the kitchen descending a short flight of steps that dropped from the lounge area at a higher level. He was immaculately dressed, his head of silver hair neatly brushed and sporting his trademark beard, now silver. "Hello Mr Searle" I smiled and as we shook hands I noticed his hands twisted by age, years of drawing and injury sustained as a POW.

We sat together at the kitchen table and started the type of conversation that comes easily between creative types; he knew I was a professional cartoonist and trusted me and indulged my sincere interest in his work and career.  I was surprised that he was interested in my work and was happy to browse my portfolio-he was honest and held little regard for computer created design work!  He much preferred the looser, hand drawn sketchbook work and drawings from life.

Introductions accomplished and aware of the short time frame I steered the conversation to his work-I had prepared questions and had a lot to get through. One hour turned into two and his already rasping voice became hoarse.  As the clock ticked I felt guilty encouraging him to tell more wonderful tales and inevitably he called time saying that his wife Monica was ill upstairs and needed his attention.

I had brought a stack of his books with me that we had examined with my specific questions.  I asked him to sign only one-trying to maintain a professional cartoonist stance and suppress the rabid fan!  (There were instances while we talked where I squealed inside "I'm talking to Ronald Searle!!" but kept it checked knowing I must concentrate on memorising everything he says because I'd have to write it all down later).

As he led me to the front door I told him that I maintain a website dedicated to his artwork and he made a note of the address-I couldn't quite figure out at that point if was online or not.  Being a very private individual and wanting no distraction from his work he was known to be only contactable by fax or written correspondence.  Although he had said he finds dip pen nibs on Ebay.  I would later realize he was entirely connected with the world via the internet.

We waved good bye and I was regretting not being able to get a photo with him-if only to prove to myself that this meeting with a legend had occured.  As I walked away from his house he touchingly said "I'm always here".
I had been living in France two years at that point and left a few months later. I wish that I had met Ronald earlier and been able to visit him more often when I lived 'locally'.  However we continued our old fashioned correspondence by written letter and the day before I left for the UK I received a package from him.  Knowing my interest in animation he had made duplicates of photos of him working on Energetically Yours and a vhs tape of animated spots he made with Ivor Wood. Gold!

The exact details of that first encounter with Ronald Searle can be read here  and here

Part 1 of Remembering Ronald is here

In part 3 I'll write about 'Lunch with the Searles'!