Ronald Searle: ‘Obsessed with drawing’

From the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Ronald Searle (1920-2011), Molesworth, 1999 (detail) © The Estate of Ronald Searle

‘Obsessed with drawing’

Ronald Searle

The Fitzwilliam Museum
Trumpington Street,
Cambridge CB2 1RB

Tuesday 13 October 2015 to Sunday 31 January 2016

Tel: 01223 332900
Fax: 01223 332923
fitzmuseum-enquiries@lists.cam.ac.uk

Ronald Searle (1920-2011) is among Britain's most popular and celebrated graphic satirists.

Born in Cambridge, Searle is best known as the inventor of the fictional girls’ school St. Trinian’s (1948) and for his collaborations on Geoffrey Willans’ Molesworth series (1953- 58). However, as this exhibition shows, he had a long and productive career across a range of different genres. Searle worked as a war artist, but also made drawings for book and magazine illustration, travel reportage, theatre, film, medals and political caricature.
Fuelled by visits to the Fitzwilliam Museum during his formative years, he had keen sense of his own place in the history of caricature - a selection of work by the caricaturists he most admired will be on display in a complementary exhibition in the Charrington Print Room (16).

This exhibition is drawn from a recent gift of the artist’s work, generously presented to the Museum by his children in 2014.

An associated exhibition Coming Home: Ronald Searle and Cambridge School of Art, curated by Professor Martin Salisbury, will run concurrently at Anglia Ruskin University's Ruskin Gallery from 13 October - 19 November.