Ronald Searle: Holidays Artist and Model

A 1989 ink drawing (with just a little bit of colored pencil) by Ronald Searle celebrates Santa's eye for the arts. The original work from the collection of Irvin Greif was sold last month in the Illustration Art sale at Heritage Auctions.

Searle's ink technique is dazzling, as always. Santa's brushwork may be in the same league:

More than sixteen hours before the sale, the bidding was at $725. The auction house's estimate was $1,500 and up. Whatever became of having a high estimate too?

Ronald Searle
Heritage Auctions listing accessed sixteen hours before the sale

https://fineart.ha.com/itm/mainstream-illustration/ronald-william-fordham-searle-british-1920-2011-reindeer-1989-ink-on-paper-12-1-2-x-11-3-4-inches-318-x-298/a/8224-71267.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515

Ronald Searle
Heritage Auctions item description

In the live bidding, the low estimate was met and exceeded.

05145

Ronald Searle: A Beefeater Is Served

In a 1996 Ronald Searle ink and watercolor drawing, we see a beefeater in a restaurant being served dinner by a bull. The meal is not very filling and not very beefy and he is not very happy. A pencil notation on the front of the artwork indicate that it is one of two drawings made for a Town and Country article on London restaurants. It was sold last month at Heritage Auctions in the  Illustration Art sale.

Searle's art is always better viewed full size:

On the back of the original is an unfinished ink drawing over pencil that was never erased. It depicts a well-to-do man in period attire being attacked by hungry books with cartoon eyeballs and sharp teeth. It's intriguing but what is it?

The bidding was strong some sixteen hours before the sale, with a solid $3,100 bid ($3,875 with the premium).

Ronald Searle
Heritage Auctions listing accessed sixteen hours before the sale

https://fineart.ha.com/itm/pulp-pulp-like-digests-and-paperback-art/ronald-william-fordham-searle-british-1920-2011-beefeater-1996-watercolor-and-ink-on-paper-14-3-4-x-14-1-4-inches/a/8224-71268.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515

Ronald Searle
Heritage Auctions item description

But the price was to go still higher in the illustration art sale during the live bidding:

December 28, 2025 Update:  These two drawings share some details of costume but are otherwise almost certainly unrelated save for the presence of books and Searle's exaggerated style. It strains credulity to suggest that a rough variant for a 1989 book illustration would be on the back of a 1996 finished drawing.

Numerous critical marginal notes in a contemporary hand
Ronald Searle
Slightly Foxed—but Still Desirable: Ronald Searle's Wicked World of Book Collecting (Souvenir Press, 1989)

https://simanaitissays.com/2013/01/31/ronald-searle/

Note:  Was this beefeater illustration actually published? Was the drawing of the dandy attacked by books ever finished? If you have access to print images of either of these, please get in touch.

05144

Midge and John Locke's Copy of The Square Egg by Ronald Searle

When Ronald Searle came to New York in February of 1969, he visited his friend the agent John Locke as well as his wife Midge. Searle must have taken down from the shelf one of Locke's copies of the U.K. edition of his latest collection, The Square Egg (1968) and inscribed and decorated it specially for the couple. The resulting ink and watercolor drawing is on the front free endpaper of the book and it's a beauty. It depicts a bird with eggs in multiple uncomfortable shapes and is dated "5 February 1969." I don't believe it was on the market previously. It was sold at auction yesterday.

"For Midge
&
John [Locke]
with love
New York
5 February 1969
Ronald"

The dust cover of the British edition has a drawing which makes good use of a rubber stamp.

Ronald Searle's printed signature on the cover

"For Midge
&
John [Locke]
with love
New York
5 February 1969
Ronald"

Online bidding opened at $25. Surely a teaser.

Ronald Searle
Live Auctioneers listing accessed September 13, 2025, three days before the sale

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/212727283_ronald-searle-signed-the-square-egg-1968-astoria-ny

I was reminded that presale bidding on the Live Auctioneers site does not have to reflect what is going on at the auctioneer's own site, and vice versa. It's good to check both. A much different story was unfolding on the Showplace website, where bidding was already up to one-hundred times the opening bid a full three days before the auction:

Ronald Searle
Live Auctioneers item description

And that's where the bidding stayed. The enthusiasm was palpable for a Searle book drawing. For the price to reach $2,500—one hundred times the opening bid!—with a 25% buyer's premium ($625), at least two bidders must have really wanted it. I hope it went to an avid collector, but I suspect the book was won by a dealer who may possibly separate the drawing from the book and offer it for sale at double the price. Such is often the fate of drawings by cartoonists with few available high quality works on the market and a strong fanbase.

Sold!

Searle used a very similar idea, but no color, in the drawing for his secretary Jean Ellsmoor's copy of the book in October 1968. The Lockes, of course, would never have seen this. In my post of March 1, 2022, I wrote, "It is, I believe, the quintessential example of a personalized copy of The Square Egg." The drawing is very fine indeed, but I now wish to retract my earlier statement.

"Well—let's hope that this
mixture turns out to
be the right shape.
To Jean [Ellsmoor] with love
from
Ronald
October 1968."

Note:  Over the years, I have posted images from a goodly number of Ronald Searle books with original drawings. They await your approval in the archives here.

05066

Five Housepets and a Globe: Ronald Searle Proposed New Yorker Cover Art

Five concerned housepets ponder the state of the world in a New Yorker cover proposal by Ronald Searle. The globe sitting on what is evidently a scholar's desk is surrounded by a dog, three cats—one a small kitten—and a parrot. The magazine's ubiquitous strap is rendered in heavy black ink along the left border intersecting with the perpendicular line of the desk top. Ample room is set aside at the top for the magazine's logo. But The New Yorker rejected this design.

Searle, working in the south of France, submitted finished artwork for his proposed covers. Even without a sale to the magazine, the art could be used in some future book (this one wasn't) or sold to a collector. The year of creation would be handwritten on the studio stamp on the verso of the art. Doyle New York did not disclose any such date in its sale of this piece on December 9, 2021 but it looks to be from around 1989, give or take.

Ronald Searle
Doyle New York sale of Rare Books, Autographs & Maps, December 9, 2021

https://www.doyle.com/auction/lot/lot-222---searle-ronald-pets--a-dog-cats-and-a-parrot-/?lot=1310521&so=4&st=Ronald%20Searle&sto=0&au=&ef=&et=&ic=False&sd=1&pp=96&pn=1&g=1

In the catalogue's description of the lot, Doyle speculates that these animals are "perhaps planning global domination." I would further speculate that the author of those words is from the generation that grew up with "Pinky and the Brain."

Note:  See yesterday's post for James Thurber's much simpler approach to a similar idea.

05056

The Owl and the Pussycat: Ronald Searle Original New Yorker Cover Art

The Owl and the Pussycat, beloved characters from Edward Lear's nonsense verse, make an appearance in Ronald Searle's New Yorker cover of July 27, 1992. In Lear's telling, they "went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat," but here they take that boat out onto Central Park Lake. Yesterday, the original Searle art was sold by Stephenson's Auctions of Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

The presale estimate was $300-$500 with the bidding starting at $150, absurdly low numbers all around. Seventeen potential bidders watched the item.

Ronald Searle
Stephenson's Auction listing 13 hours before the sale

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/195157908_ronald-william-fordham-searle-illustration-art

Sold! (To an internet bidder.)

Note:  For further reading, see the blog's 2020 post on Arnie Levin and Ronald Searle: The Owl and the Pussycat and The New Yorker. It's an old favorite of mine.

04842

W. B. Park: Stout-Hearted Men

In 1981, The New Yorker could still expect a majority of its readers to spot a reference to a 1928 operetta in one of its cartoons. Don't look for any similar cultural nods in today's magazine. This drawing was W. B. Park's first New Yorker sale. The original art was sold on eBay late in September.

" . . . or, to put it another way: Give me some men who are stout[-]hearted men who will fight for the right they adore."
W. B. Park
Original art
The New Yorker, July 13, 1981, p. 25

Detail, top, with W. B. Park's signature

Detail, bottom, with W. B. Park's signature

Handwritten caption

The brown wrapper has layout instructions for scaling Park's signature to a smaller size. The artist's notation indicates that this was his first sale to the magazine, occuring on July 13, 1981.

W. B. Park
eBay listing ended September 29, 2024

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204866897479_skw=Rare+Original+The+New+Yorker+Illustration+Drawing+Published%2C+signed+%26+Fine&itmmeta=01JFEAMZEVBKKZ7M289K6Z6BX5&hash=item2fb304c647:g:EwEAAOSwB2lmhJDy&itmprp=enc%3AAQ

AJAAABIHoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKkHBtlmXcSX5rflt7MhyuwUmhK%2BY2Jvv7L1VRKipvzgbHArazWGZD1kpjfmig6uc%2BNVDlYcqScZS4pliHSLWsnkGrZ0DbTdCf67kYY05bsx0mPW7%2FtkGdnloN9vDcFV

Mnvf%2Bq5Q%2Bzo1UqDv%2Fkl0B7Dl361HYFZ%2B6%2BTxHx8SRwe3Gu7aYm4XhWmnBJPR8d5fxsgnGuSVJJ0NYwDgffMpBgRK49QNg2rh92sQCCKFgrsynJc5n9Ebe4EVcb%2Fo%2FjSD7oETWiI%2

Bski1cx7g%2FrRWX9stb5PU1TWj%2BPxWMll2nqEhpRYpaLD1VnKjD9dHnHakmfAI%2FZ0id2sBDHisgMGbgWAtwcUdn0TR5jCrn5mQpTGz%2BQ%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR8D308r7ZA

W. B. Park
eBay item description

" . . . or, to put it another way: Give me some men who are stout-hearted men who will fight for the right they adore."
W. B. Park
The New Yorker, July 13, 1981, p. 25

" . . . or, to put it another way: Give me some men who are stout[-]hearted men who will fight for the right they adore."
W. B. Park
Original art
The New Yorker, July 13, 1981, p. 25

With drawings by William Steig and W. B. Park

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1981-07-13/flipbook/024/

For those who today may be unfamiliar with Sigmund Romberg's "The New Moon," here's the rousing anthem to which the Park cartoon refers:

"Stout-Hearted Men"

Nelson Eddy

"The New Moon" (1928, 1940 film)

Sigmund Romberg, composer

Oscar Hammerstein II, lyricist

Williams Steig's drawing on the left side of the page makes for quite a contrast with the Park cartoon. There is no caption, just a title, and no joke. The spread of the open magazine was balanced both graphically and in the tone of the drawings.

Tiger Hunt by Moonlight
William Steig
The New Yorker, July 13, 1981, p. 24

04837