Art

Ronald Searle, 1920- 2011

Alan Hindle | Tuesday 3 January, 2012 16:43

I don’t think I learned anything at art school except a deep distrust of the art world. Everything I know about drawing I stole from Ronald Searle. It’s inexplicable, but I have only to look at the scratchy, squiggly, pulsing lines of his doodles and I’m happy. I always thought maybe, somehow, I would go to France and bribe my way with a bottle of champagne to an audience with Searle. Now that will never be. Ronald Searle has died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 91.

Every cartoonist since the fifties has been influenced by him, whether they are aware of it or not. His visual record of life and death in the Changi prisoner of war camp, created under devastating conditions and at huge risk, are still powerful today. But what he is best known for are the joyously raucous illustrations of his St. Trinian’s cartoons and the Molesworth books he did with Geoffrey Wiilans, followed by his gloriously human cats, travel illustrations, caricatures, and intensely detailed, baroquely curliecued cityscapes. His commercial illustrations helped shape the look of glossy magazines after WWII, right through to the seventies and his legion of devoted acolytes/grateful thieves now permeate the graphic design world.

He will be missed. I will miss him. But at least, whenever I scribble my own doodles, I am tapping into my love for his work and feel a little of that happiness still.

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