Editorial Illustration

Following on from the last post on the New Yorker cartoons here's a batch of editorial pieces mainly from the 90s

'Glyndebourne re-opens'

(lower left) mixed media, unframed 20¾ x 17¼in.

Cover drawing for Telegraph Magazine, 7 May, 1994

'The hand of authority'

pencil, black ink and watercolour, unframed13 x 7 in. (33 x 17.8 cm.)

Harper's magazine, New York.

'Savile Row - In all its glory'

pencil, pen and black ink and watercolour, unframed 19 x 16in. 

An original illustration for Town and Country Magazine, published New York, April 1989

'Le Glorious 12th'

pencil, pen and black ink and watercolour, unframed 12 x 19in. 

An original illustration for Forbes FYI Magazine, published New York, 1992

'Butler School'

pencil, pen and black ink and watercolour, unframed 19 x 16in. 

An original illustration for Forbes FYI Magazine, published in New York, November 1992

'Children's cooking classes at the Ritz'

pencil and black ink, 16½ x 15 3/8 in. 

International Herald Tribune, Paris, 29th March, 1997.

'Perpetual motion'

pencil, pen and black ink and watercolour, 18 x 18in. (45.6 x 45.6cm.)

An original illustration for an article on house exchanging in Yankee Magazine, September 1991

'Bacchus & Co'

mixed media, 19½ x 18¼in. 

An original illustration for Forbes Magazine, New York, 8th May, 1995

'Senior citizen crossing'

pencil and pen and black ink, 14¾ x 19½in. 

An original illustration for International Herald Tribune, published Paris, 5 July, 1997

'Computer deity'

pen and black ink and watercolour 16¼ x 12¼ in.

Harvard Business Review, U.S.A., March 1984 issue.

'The Gods are angry'

signed 'Ronald Searle' (lower right)

pencil and black ink, 15 x 19 in. (38 x 48 cm.)

Le Monde, Paris 25 July 1996.

'Computer bug'

signed and inscribed 'Ronald Searle/Computer bug' (lower left)

pencil, pen and black ink and watercolour, 16¾ x 7 in. (42.6 x 17.8 cm.)

Harvard Business Review, U.S.A., March, 1984 issue.

'Superwoman'

signed and inscribed 'Ronald Searle/Superwoman' (lower left)

pencil and black ink, 18½ x 16 in. (47 x 40.5 cm.)

International Herald Tribune, Paris, 11 October 1997.

'Waiting for walkies'

signed 'Ronald Searle' and inscribed as title (lower left)

pen, black ink and watercolour, 12¼ x 18 in. (31 x 46 cm.)

An original illustration for the International Herald Tribune, Paris, 13 January 2001.

'Get me the zoo, please, Miss Winterton'

signed, dated and inscribed 'Ronald searle/1955./'Get me the Zoo, please, Miss Winterton'

pencil, pen and ink and grey wash, 11¾ x 8¾in. (29.9 x 22.2cm.)

An original illustration for "Figaro", Paris 1955

'Pleasures of Golf'

signed and dated 'Ronald Searle 1992' (lower left) and inscribed 'Pleasures of golf' (lower right)

pencil, pen and black ink and watercolour, 17 x 17in. (43.7 x 44.5cm.)

An original illustration for Yankee Magazine, published June 1992

'Zeus & Co.'

signed 'Ronald Searle' (lower right) and inscribed as title (lower left)

pencil, pen and black ink and watercolour heightened with white, 21 x 16½ in. (53 x 42 cm.)

An original illustration for Town and Country Magazine, published New York, June, 1994.

'Something in the cellar'

pencil and pen and black ink,  17½ x 15in. (44.5 x 38.5cm.)

International Herald Tribune, published Paris, 18 October, 1997

'St George and the Euro Dragon'

signed 'Ronald Searle' (lower left) and inscribed 'L'Eurosceptique' (lower left)

pencil and pen and black ink, 16½ x 19¾in. (41.8 x 50.2cm.)

An original illustration for Le Monde, Paris, 26 March 1997.

'Ice hockey'

signed, inscribed and dated 'Ronald Searle/1972. Madison Square Gardens NYC/NY Rangers v Buffalo Sabres' (lower right) and 'Sports Illustrated: Ice Hockey' (lower left)

pencil, watercolour and bodycolour, 16¾ x 12¾ in. (42.6 x 32.4 cm.)

Sports Illustrated Magazine, New York.

'The gourmand'

signed, inscribed and dated 'Ronald Searle/1995/Le Gourmand' (lower left)

pencil, pen and ink, watercolour and coloured crayon, 18¾ x 16½in. (47.6 x 42cm.)

An original illustration for Yankee Magazine, USA, summer issue, 1995.

'Tackling the problem'

signed and inscribed 'Ronald Searle/Tackling the problem' (lower left) and dated '1999' (lower right)

pencil and pen and black ink, 19¼ x 15 3/8in. (49 x 39.1cm.)

An original illustration for C.N.R.S., Paris (National Centre for Scientific Research)

'Quiet day at the office'

signed and inscribed 'Ronald Searle' (lower right) and 'Quiet day at the office' (lower left)

pencil and black ink, 16½ x 19½ in. (41.9 x 49.5 cm.)

This was a project design for a New York agency.

'Girlpower!'

signed 'Ronald Searle' (lower right)

pencil and pen and black ink, 15¾ x 13in. 

An original illustration for International Herald Tribune, Paris, 16 March 1996.

'Weight Watcher'

signed 'Ronald Searle' and inscribed as title

pencil and pen and black ink, 10¾ x 17½in. 

An illustration for the New York Times, 3 February 1996

'Thoughts by Nigel M: 'Ye English (Well, some ready to be stuffed)'

pencil, pen and black ink, 6¾ x 12 in. 

Ronald Searle, Thoughts by Nigel - Young Elizabethan Magazine.

'Nigel dreams: 'Oo gosh! Babe Nigel make the home run'

pencil, black ink and bodycolour, 11¾ x 16 in. (30 x 40.7 cm.)

Sports Illustrated Magazine, New York, 1963.

                                              'The Rolling Stones/are still at it./Lapidation.'

signed and dated 'Ronald Searle/1993' (lower right) and inscribed 

pencil, pen and black ink, watercolour and coloured crayon, 14 5/8 x 12¼in.

An original illustration for the New Yorker series 'Great Moments in Music'

'Comment apprendre une Langue Etrangere'

signed 'Ronald Searle', inscribed as title and further inscribed 'Mon Dieu! and its raining cats et dogs'

pencil, pen and black ink, watercolour and crayon, 19½ x 15in.

An illustration for Le Temps Retrouve magazine, Paris, July 1994

'Stately homes of England - for rent'

pencil and black ink, 15 x 15 in. 

New York Times, 22 August 1971 issue.

An original illustration for Forbes FYI Magazine New York, May 1995

Happy Birthday to you

pencil, pen and black ink, watercolour and coloured crayon, 18 x 12¾in.

'Adam and Eve and the Flaming Sword of P.C.'
Published: Saturday Review, New York, July 1972

New Yorker cartoons

Not only did Searle illustrate dozens of fine covers for the New Yorker but also contributed interior cartoons. The magazine ran several series by Searle including a delightful collection of historical what ifs entitled 'Crossed Paths'. (Later published in a book collection 'Marquis De Sade meets Goody Two Shoes')

'Daisy Ashford meets Concise Oxford'

In the introduction to 'Marquis de Sade meets Goody Two Shoes' Searle expands on the genesis of the project:

'The theme of this collection, that of crossing a few unlikely paths, first emerged a year or two back, while I was re-dipping into the murky life of  Edgar Allan Poe and re-encountering, that same afternoon, some of the worst of E. Hemingway's macho prose. Suddenly I had this distressing vision of Hemingway blasting the brains out of Poe's quothing raven, so that nevermore would the gloomy bird go on about doom, fate and the shocking price of bird seed in New York.  From then on it was only a short trot to other fanciful encounters.  Donatien Alphonse Francois, Marquis de Sade, for example.  His sheer bad luck in crossing the path of the unspeakable Goody Two-Shoes, who was capable of crushing the spirit of men more monstrous and certainly less readable than he, was startling, to say the least of it.  

Is it not likely that one such numbing encounter - with or without skipping-rope - resulted in his incarceration and, finally, death in the lunatic asylum at Charenton?  Such unlikely pairing opened up a world of nightmarish possibilities.  Take old Omar Khayyám's brief encounter while he was lolling about with a loaf, a jug of wine and his girlfriend Thou, under a desert palm.  If only he had enrolled in the Charles Atlas Biceps Course before T. E. Lawrence kicked sand in his face, the Rubáiyát might have been less soppy.

Crosssed paths, like crossed legs, can conceal an awful lot of surprises.  Had impetuous Caesar, for example, listened more carefully, would he still have chopped de Gaulle into three parts?

Well, maybe . . . '

 Searle even interpreted the magazine's famous mascot Eustace Tilley . . .

. . . and sometimes contributed 'The Back Page'

This 'Angel of Inspiration' is, I believe, a New Yorker commission

The New Yorker's obituary for Searle

19th November 1966

"They're over here . . ."

American supermarket chains come to Italy - illustrations for an article on 'The Americanisation of Europe' in the Telegraph magazine 1965.   'Ronald Searle asks whether "Le Supermag" indicates the thin edge of a nasty wedge' indicates that he also wrote the copy as he would do for TV Guide in the 70s. It contains his usual eloquent phrasing and biting satire as sharp as his drawings .
'Europe may look askance at American politics abroad but she is trying to swallow whole certain other elements of American life.  By some, the self-Americanisation of Europe is seen as a rather nasty sort of masochism; by others, as a sinister and disarming method of infiltration by the CIA.  True, that many buildings go up instead of out, that the glass matchbox has become a dreary part of most European cities, dominating the gently crumbling tourist attractions.  True, that Coca Cola discs can be seen littering the walls of coffee shops in villages as remote as those of the High Atlas in Morocco.  But ths rash of red spots can no more pinpoint an Americanisation of Europe than a flood of Scotch whisky can indicate the Scotlandisation of France, or the now pot-holed autobahns of Mussolini and Hitler indicate the growth of Fascism in America because the Italians and the Germans got in first with super-highways . . . '

'. . . Though the importation of Le Supermag in France, or Selbestbedienung in Germany (to pick only two examples), might seem to indicate the thin end of a rather nasty wedge, the appearance in them of the now legendary can of red wine no more indicates a mass switch from the bottle than the appearance of canned London fog in America indicates a mass switch by the American continent away from American fresh air.
The American supermarket is an exportable idea, as is the European cuisine and the European pocket book.  A continent absorbs these elements into its own pattern until it comes to believe that they are its own.  If you told housewives that staunch British goods such as Lipton's Tea and Persil were, in that order, American and German in origin, they would look at you with pitying disbelief.
This imagined Americanisation of Europe is a European dream fulfillment.  It is not entirely wrong to say that in America, the word France conjures up a vision of the Can-Can.  In Europe, the word America conjures up the Wild West, cowboys and Indians, gangsters, James Dean and blue jeans.  America is New York (skyscrapers), Chicago (gangsters) and Hollywood (of course).  Anything else is the Far West (including Washington), or the Deep South.  However, this list has recently come to include Dallas, Texas. . . '

'There are Dr Kildare syringes in European toy shops, but Bonanza gets the ratings.  My local cinema in Paris showed 100 cowboy films in 100 days last year,and any night you had to queue to get in.
The latest addition to the neighbourhood is Le-Drugstore-Saint-Germain-des-Pres.  It is built of marble and brass and embellished with bronze shields which embody either the eye or the lips of a hero of our time.  The eye of Picasso is there, and so are the lips of Bardot.  Sticking out from the walls into the boulevard are half a dozen old bracket lamps, no longer lit by gas but still crowned with the traditional spike.
I predict that the first head to be impaled on a spike will be that of the American who gazes around Le Drugstore and says "Gee, this is just like we have at home."

Photograph of original drawing

The series of drawings was expanded and re-ublished a year later in American VENTURE magazine.  Searle's ever canny agent consistently sold the same drawings to multiple publication outlets!  The drawings added for Venture are even more impressive (and actually features the 'SuperMag' mentioned in the Telegraph piece but not illustrated!).

Searle had, of course, poked at the post-war American cultural 'invasion' previously such as this editorial picture for LIFE magazine almost a decade earlier.

"A critical view of American conduct abroad is expressed in this drawing . . . of U. S. visitors in an Italian town. Villagers watch, fascinated, from stairways as the strangely clad members of a tourist party, just disgorged from a huge American automobile, disport themselves about a fountain while one of a group of lounging GIs gives a wolf-whistle at a passing girl."

LIFE magazine 23 Dec 1957

NYC exhibition

'This exhibition features the poetry of Robert Forbes and the drawings of Ronald Searle, featured in three books, BEASTLY FEASTS! A Mischievous Menagerie in Rhyme; LET’S HAVE A BITE! A Banquet of Beastly Rhymes, and the latest, BEAST FRIENDS FOREVER! Animal Lovers in Rhyme.

Robert Forbes writes:

All the drawings are done by the great Ronald Searle, and I think you will agree that they bring magic to the poems. When I first had enough poems to think about doing a book, I asked myself, who is the top, who is the best illustrator I could possibly get to do these? The answer for me was Ronald Searle, so I just asked. I have learned in life that if you don’t try, you will never know what could have been.

I am very grateful to him for interpreting all my creatures so brilliantly, with such zest and wit. By the way, if you look closely at each drawing you will see a mouse who shows up in every one! See if you can spot him

How does a book like this come together? What I did was write a bunch of poems and then I send them to Ronald.

A few months later, a large package arrives. I felt like a little boy at Christmas opening a highly anticipated present! Imagine my delight and wonder as my creatures sprang to life under his pens and inks, pastels and paints.

The key to these books, then, is imagination. When I read in schools and libraries, that is what I tell the children right away, that we are entering this world created by imagination but they must remember that they too have imaginations as good as mine or anybody else’s. So do you! .'

Through August 3, 2013