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.

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Ronald Searle's China Shop

In 1977, Ronald Searle published Zoodiac, a series of full-color illustrations, a different animal appearing on two facing pages for each sign of the zodiac. The illustrations were all created specifically for the book and are among the funniest and most technically-brilliant ever created by the artist. It could have been Searle's last word on the subject—but it wasn't.

More than twenty years later, Searle revisited the same territory—one full-color, full-page illustration of an animal for each sign of the zodiac—and the series appeared in Town and Country magazine. In the case of Taurus in the China Shop, we can now compare the original magazine art published in 1998 with an alternative version offered last month at Sotheby's London. The published version of the art has a more physically-active and more casually-dressed bull, a more concerned saleswoman, and a more varied collection of animal figures.

Ronald Searle, Taurus in the China Shop, 1998
Original art, Town and Country, 1999

http://www.ronaldsearle.co.uk/taurus.htm

Ronald Searle, Taurus, 1998
Alternative version to that in Town and Country, 1999

Ronald Searle
Sotheby's London
July 11, 2017 Lot 231
Unsold

Ronald Searle
Sotheby's London
July 11, 2017 Lot 231
Details and Cataloguing

Taurus, from Ronald Searle's Zoodiac, 1977:

Ronald Searle, Zoodiac, 1977, title page

http://ecc-cartoonbooksclub.blogspot.com/2014/01/zoodiac-by-ronals-searle.html

Ronald Searle, Zoodiac, 1977, endpaper

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1st-American-Edition-Hardback-Jacket-ZOODIAC-Ronald-Searle-Pantheon-Books-1977-/332103140502?hash=item4d52e3c496:g:yfYAAOSw-0xYiPJu

Ronald Searle, Zoodiac, 1977, procession

http://twilightstarsong.blogspot.com/2012/03/arty-farty-friday-two-march-3rd.html

Which version of the 1998 illustration do you prefer?

Ronald Searle, Taurus in the China Shop, 1998

Original art, Town and Country, 1999

Ronald Searle, Taurus, 1998

Alternative or preliminary version to that in Town and Country, 1999

Note:  Attempted Bloggery is looking for submissions of published and unpublished original book and magazine illustrations by Ronald Searle and other New Yorker artists. Alternative or preliminary versions are especially welcome. You break it, you bought it.


Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Ronald Searle

Preliminary Art

Attempted Bloggery's Fragile Index

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Ronald Searle: Cosmetic Surgery

Town & Country's March 1999 issue included a "Comprehensive Guide to Cosmetic Surgery." Ronald Searle's clever illustration casts the plastic surgeon as a medical sculptor. Artistically, the composition is reminiscent of many portrayals of the myth of Galatea and Pygmalion, except that here Galatea is admiring herself.

Ronald Searle, Town & Country's Comprehensive Guide to Cosmetic Surgery, March 1999

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&_trksid=p4340.l2557&item=230750363900&nma=true&rt=nc&si=Zv4PhLp6HocGRC23iqci2JeQ2LI%253D&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWAX%3AIT&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc#ht_500wt_1413

Note:  See how Walt Disney's "101 Dalmations" was influenced by Ronald Searle here.

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