Ronald Searle: Coins of the Realm

Sins of omission may be found on occasion in the listings of any auction house. The James Cox Gallery of Willow, New York, for example, sold these two images by Ronald Searle, Coins of the Realm, on Sunday without providing bidders with all the relevant information:

The caricatures of Bill Clinton and Al Gore date from 1993, and must have been created just prior to the Inauguration.

The gallery's first omission was to fail to identify these as original art. The listing instead refers to these two pieces as lithographs despite their being executed in ink, watercolor, and apparently crayon.

The verso bears the studio stamp which should allow just about anyone to identify these as original art.

The Clinton coin is about the president's focus on economics; the Gore coin reflects the vice president's concern for the environment.

The reverse of the Gore coin illustration has the false start of an original drawing of the vice president that the artist abandoned—and then obscured.

Ronald Searle
James Cox Gallery
May 23, 2021

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/RONALD-SEARLE-1920-2011-21-c-C214CE0B38?utm_source=alerts&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=inv_artistalert&utm_term=2

The gallery's other major omission was the failure to note that these drawings were originally published in The New Yorker:

"Artist's Notebook" by Ronald Searle

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1993-01-25/flipbook/078/

What cannot be divined is whether a more complete auction listing would have brought the price of this lot up into a range that better reflects the market value of Searle originals.

Also unknowable, at least for now, are the whereabouts of the two drawings of the reverse of the medals? Why was the set broken up heads and tails? It just doesn't seem right.

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