Chris Beetles

(click image to enlarge)

Face à Mrs Cripplestone et à ses hôtes, après la catastrophe

Ronald Searle (1920-2011)

Price

£850

Signed

Inscribed 'Mrs Robinson' and 'Mrs C'
Preliminary pen and ink drawings of a guard in a bearskin and a man in morning dress on reverse

Medium

Pen and ink on tracing paper and typed text on paper, both laid on paper

Dimensions

9 ½ x 7 ½ inches

Illustrated

Preliminary drawing for Le Figaro, DATE 1955, 'Le Major Thompson et Les Anglais: Catastrophe chez Mrs Cripplestone' by Pierre Daninos

Mounted

Taken from the sketchbook, 'Major Thompson in Paris, Figaro', 1955

The Boarding House of Mrs Cripplestone
Mrs Cripplestone, widow of an Indian Army officer and of a first husband whose portraits she carries in two lockets, one round her neck and the other on a chain on her large bosom, resembles very much your school mistresses of the boarding house keeper you created for a book called ‘London So Help Me’. The drawing of the dining room with the old ladies and several retired officers (the boarding house is in South Kensington) would be exactly in the style of the one in this book on page 15 (“An atmosphere of peaceful gentility”).