We have seen how Ronald Searle created original lithographs from barely a handful of his published New Yorker covers. There is a curious counterexample of him creating one New Yorker cover based upon an original lithograph. The print, Oh Les Beaux Jours, dates from 1971 and depicts an impossibly ancient waiter carrying an impossibly fanciful bird on a platter. The lithograph is seldom seen despite having been issued in a limited edition of 99 plus a total of thirty-five artist's proofs. The image cannot be very well known even among Searle aficionados and the New Yorker's editors could scarcely have had an inkling of it. From Searle's New Yorker cover two decades later one can trace a direct lineage back to this lithograph.
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| Ronald Searle Oh Les Beaux Jours Gurlitt 71 Edition of 99, 1971 |
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Ronald Searle
The New Yorker, March 19, 1990
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The lithograph's catalogue entry:
Does this magazine cover look familiar? The New Yorker reused the image on the cover of Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink published in 2007.
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| Galerie Wolfgang Gurlitt Ronald Searle catalogue |
Here are a few more images of the rarely-seen lithograph:
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| Ronald Searle Oh Les Beaux Jours Gurlitt 71 Edition of 99, 1971 |
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| 57/99 |
Does this magazine cover look familiar? The New Yorker reused the image on the cover of Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink published in 2007.
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| Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink Edited by David Remnick, 2007 |
January 11, 2020 Update: And then there is this reportedly untitled 1979 lithograph:
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| Ronald Searle Lithograph, 1979 Inscribed |
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