POW pt.5

A drawing from Searle's time incarcerated by the Japanese during WWII has popped up here on eBay. It's expensive but appears to be authentic. This will probably go to a private collector but should really be in the Imperial War Museum with the collection of Searle's POW sketches.

The V&A museum, London dug up some early Searle history. His sketch of a prisoner production of 'Hamlet' with the artist appearing as the ghost! Link here
The prisoners would stage plays and comedy revue shows to buoy their spirits. Searle drew programmes- only one or two copies each- that were disseminated around thousands of hands.

The National Archives, Great Britain have several Searle pieces on their online database:

'General Collapse' (Lilliput). Artist: Ronald Searle (signed). Media/Technique: Pen (fountain pen) and ink (black carbon ink) on good quality artists paper attached to board. Artist's signature at bottom right. Coloured ink showing measurements. Graphite notations on top right. Damage to tall man’s face. The fibres are disturbed or lifted. Other media/information: Verso Reference written in waxy black media. Coloured ink (red) stamp showing return address of artist. This is crossed out and new return address is written by Searle. This reads 32 Newton road W2, Bay 3942. Drawings for magazines Ministry of information. Original artwork for Mirror, Echo, Blick in die welt. (Mirror & Echo).

More on Searle's wartime experience here

Early Searle

I'm slowly piecing together Ronald's early, post-war career after he was liberated from captivity by the Japanese and returned to England. Even in the prison camp he maintained a tiny notebook with miniscule thumbnail ideas for cartoons in the belief that survival would mean resuming his career as a cartoonist which had started  to take off just as he enlisted.

This is one of the earliest examples I've found of his cartoons published in Punch magazine. He was twenty seven years old at this point and eager to make an impression in the London magazine cartooning field.

Punch March 5 1947 Vol CCXII 5539

That same month the venerable compendium of contemporary satire published another cartoon

Punch March 26 1947 Vol CCXII 5542

In this newspaper clipping from 1948 we see Searle's early work already making an impression on the Continent.

The following I unearthed in the vaults of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

December 1947


For more early Searle also see Lilliput pt.1  and London Opinion and The Strand

Lilliput pt.1

Lilliput magazine was a popular, pocket sized magazine of the 1940s-50s. Searle's work for the magazine fell into two styles; the broad cartoons of St. Trinians and the Patrick Campbell series; and more naturalistic illustrations accompanying short stories.

'Life in the Studio' 1946

These two studies are in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Two sketches for 'Artist & Model' a cartoon for Lilliput magazine. Searle thoroughly explored the composition and forms of his figures before working up the final drawing. It looks like the first one was almost final then abandoned?

The same here: a study and a more worked up final but I'm not aware of them seeing publication in Lilliput.

October 1946

'"GIRLS, GIRLS! - A LITTLE LESS NOISE, PLEASE"' Lilliput, October 1946.
 Hurrah for St. Trinian's, London, 1948. 

January 1947 

'Cave!'
Lilliput, January 1947.

Hurrah for St. Trinian's, London, 1948, p. 57. 

March 1947

'The Place Where it Happened'

A Report by Honor Tracy

Lilliput magazine May 1949

'The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag'

A Short Story byJim Corbett

Lilliput magazine April-May 1951

'All Correct, Sir

A Short Story by Bill Naughton

Lilliput magazine May-June 1951

'Maisie was a Lady

A Short Story by Paul Vincent Carroll

Lilliput magazine June-July 1951

'Honesty's A Jewel'

A Short Story by Roderick Milton

Lilliput magazine Nov-Dec 1951

Searle only illustrated two covers for the magazine as far as I know.

Many of Searle's contemporaries worked for the magazine too; James Fitton, Anton, Walter Trier, Gerald Hoffnung et al. and it was well known as a compendium of the best of British illustration in the 1950s. Even the Disney animators were familiar with it and an hommage found its way into 'One Hundred & One Dalmations' (1961), perhaps a tacit admission from a film which stylized its art direction directly after Searle's work.

Searle's artwork was so ubiquitous during this era that even in an issue absent of Searle's editorial illustrations there would still be advertisements illustrated by him.

See my Lilliput blog for more. . .

The V&A’s birthday

Last June the Victoria & Albert Museum celebrated its 150th birthday with a special project where 150 designers, architects, photographers and artists each contributed a page to a commemorative book. Here is Searle's contribution-

'Always with it' (2007)

"I remember when I first met Ronald Searle, just about 60 years ago. The BBC at that time had a radio series in which a hopeful beginner was taken to meet a well-established professional. I can still remember the drawing, by Searle himself, in the Radio Times – the artist crouched awkwardly in some primitive stocks, about to be quizzed by a spotty infant, who was me. At 20, I had done effectively nothing; Searle, only 12 years my senior, was already a star, known internationally, and in the studio of his striking modern house in Bayswater I lacked the confidence to ask the most important question: What kind of pen-nibs do you use?

Perhaps strangely, I have never actually met Searle again since that time, which doesn't mean that I haven't over the years had a vivid awareness of what he has been up to: practically everything that anyone who does illustration aspires to. Of course, retrospectively, those astonishing drawings that he brought back from the Japanese prison camps; and then the comedy of St Trinians and Molesworth; more reportage from refugee camps; wonderful caricature, particularly in the theatre, and then over years of world travel what amount to wholesale caricatures of cities and countries; years of satire in the pages of Le Monde. And now I have on the table in front of me Les Très Riches Heures of Mrs Mole, the drawings he did for his wife Monica, which shows how sensitive a satirist he can be.

His reputation is international; but I think many of us will regret that he has not been better appreciated in his own country. In the 60s he left for a new life in France; a country which as soon as 1973 – 40 years ago – mounted a full-scale exhibition of his work in the Bibliothèque Nationale. By contrast no major institution in Britain has managed to do anything of the same sort; disappointing not least in that he is a striking representative of a great British tradition, of something we do well, and where he stands with his own heroes, George Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson.

In 2007 the Victoria & Albert Museum celebrated its 150th birthday and invited 150 artists and designers each to contribute a page to a memorial volume. The Searle page – the most energetic page in the book – shows Albert and Queen Victoria in full 19th-century rig, but nevertheless dancing like crazy. At the top lefthand corner of the drawing, in Searle's distinctive handwriting, are the words: "V and A: always with it."

Searle the artist was with it throughout the whole of his prolific working life, to our benefit and inspiration. A graphic hero.

-Quentin Blake