Another fake

 Fake Searles pop up on the art market with regularity but their deficiencies are glaringly obvious to the trained eye of a Searle aficionado. This poor copy of his Ian Fleming cartoon is on sale this month at Rosebery's Auctions.

The rear view:

It has previously passed through Abbott & Holder Auctions, whom I've previously alerted to a fake but they're too snooty to accept my concerns.

Here's the real drawing below. The superior draughtsmanship is obvious revealing the "copy" to be quite sloppy- look at the lazy rendering in the fur, the size of the facial features, the angle of the arm touching the ground etc.

Searle was meticulous in cataloguing his work. I found this clipping in his files at the Searle Archive in Hanover.

The archive also holds his rough sketch.

See more fake Searles here and here and here

Festival of Britain update

 Original added to the Festival of Britain page here.

(Sold at Auction at Abbott & Holder, UK.)


The Construction of the Festival of Britain. 
Pen and ink. Faded. Signed and indistinctly inscribed. 
9.5x14 inches. Framed: 17.5x21.25 inches.

TV Guide

 

31 July, 1976

For comparison of Searle's Carroll O'Connor here's his cover for 'All In The Family'.

See my book 'Ronald Searle's America' for the collected TV Guide artwork including many scanned form the original art.

See more Searles from TV Guide here

The New Yorker

 

'Garbage' for 'The New Yorker'

Unpublished cover for 'The New Yorker'

(collection of Peter de Seve)

See more Searle cartoons for 'The New Yorker' here and here and his run of covers for the magazine here

Flower of Cities

 

Searle illustrated a chapter in the beautifully produced anthology on London 'Flower of Cities' (Parrish, 1949). His drawings appear alongside many contemporary artist and writers. 

Searle's work became synonymous with the city in which he lived and made his name after the war. See more here and here and here

The screen-printed style of the day in book-jacket design:

Searle's birthday!

 Let's celebrate Ronald Searle's birthday (March, 3rd) with a Lemonhart Rum update!

Even after 20 years researching Searle's work I still find pieces I'm unfamiliar with such as this wonderful Lemonhart Rum poster showing Mr Lemonhart and Mr Lamb investigating ancient hieroglyphics in an Egyptian pyramid! 

Here's a nice variation on the Lemonhart father & daughter- is she jumping or floating? 

BOAC

 

Thanks to Denis Murphy for the scans!