Collection: The Cartoon Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  Foundation and former homes (key people and places)

  In 1989, a group of cartoonists and collectors came together to form The Cartoon Art Trust (CAT), a registered charity, with the aim of founding a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, promoting and preserving the best of British cartoon art. Simon Heneage, chair of trustees, a collector and Mel Calman, pocket cartoonist for the Times, founded the charity and other trustees included Diana Willis (daughter of H. M. Bateman), Oliver Heath Robinson (son of William Heath Robinson), Nicholas Garland OBE (political cartoonist at The Daily Telegraph), Ann McMullan MBE (niece of Pont), and John Jensen (cartoonist).

  The collection was stored with Ciantar Associates, experts in conservation of cartoons and prints.

  By 2002 Ciantar Associates returned the collection (then 600 items) to the Cartoon Art Trust at its new home in the Brunswick Centre in London and with the then new curator Anita O’Brian, funded by a grant from the Pilgrim Trust. The Cartoon Art Trust gallery was rebranded as The Cartoon Art Trust Museum.

  In February 2006, after a decade of exhibiting in smaller venues with no permanent home, at Carriage Row in Eversholt Street, at Hatton Garden and at the Brunswick Centre (sponsored by Allied London Properties), in The Cartoon Museum (now renamed) opened to the public at its first permanent home in Little Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London. Oliver Preston, chair, welcomed patron Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, who opened the new museum, and was shown around its galleries, and its collections and library. As well as a permanent display of the history of British cartooning and comics, over 50 temporary exhibitions were displayed from 2006–2019 including shows on Private Eye, William Heath Robinson, Steve Bell, Giles, Pont, H.M. Bateman, Viz Comics, Ronald Searle, The Beano, Ralph Steadman, Rowland Emett and many more.

  At the end of 2018 the museum’s lease was set to expire and landlords were asking for an uplift in rent from £75,000 to £150,000. Trustees managed to secure a 25-year lease at a peppercorn rent from landlords Great Portland Estates under a section 106a, enabling the museum to have a new – permanent home from the beginning of 2019. £1,100,000 was raised from charitable trusts to renovate the space into a modern new museum and building works were carried out in 2019, coming in £100,000 under budget. Large Donors included GPE (£250k), Garfield Weston (£100k), the Sackler Trust (£150k), the Hintze Family Trust (£250k over 5 years), The Fleming Trust (25k), the Swire Trust (£30k), The Pilgrim Trust (£25k), Clore Duffield (£50k), and others. The new museum opened in July 2019, with two exhibition galleries, and a Clore Learning Studio, and office premises were rented on a 5 year lease in Margaret Street nearby.

  History of major acquisitions and bequests

  At the heart of the museum lay its growing collection of cartoons, caricatures and comic art. At the outset, each trustee donated cartoons from their private and family collections to form the basis of the CAT Collection. The trustees focused the collection primarily on British cartoons, caricature and comics but earlier in the 1990s trustees started accessioning works by overseas artists (including Goscinny, David Levine and Olaf Gulbrannssen.)

  The museum has received significant donations by contemporary cartoonists, their families, individuals, institutions and collectors from the 1990s to 2023.

  Major and significant donations of collections to the museum, have included:

  1990, CAT trustee donations:

  • H. M. Bateman cartoons from his daughter Diana Willis, trustee
  • Pont cartoons from Ann McMullan MBE, niece.
  • William Heath Robinson, Ronald Searle and other cartoons from Simon Heneage, chair of trustees.
  • Cartoons from John Jensen, Mel Calman and Nicholas Garland OBE, trustees.

  1999, The Allan Cuthbertson bequest: A large collection of original caricatures in watercolour and drawings from the estate of actor Allan Cuthbertson. The donated works included many by his favourites George, Isaac and Robert Cruikshank, and Thomas Rowlandson, George Woodward, Edmund Dulac, James Gillray, Henry William Bunbury, Hablot Browne (‘Phiz’), John Leech, Charles Keene, Robert Dighton, J. J. Grandville, Richard Newton, George du Maurier, Linley Sambourne, Bernard Partridge, George Belcher, Ronald Searle (Ulysses) and many others. In addition original artwork by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo for a cover of Asterix.

  On 3 October 2000, further items relating to the above bequest, including specialist and valuable books and drawings which were purchased at a Bonhams auction (by Amanda Jane Doran and Oliver Preston) at a sale of the books from Cuthbertson’s library, and further pictures with a monetary bequest received from his estate. These book purchases formed the core of the library’s Special Collection. Further artwork purchased at the sale included, Ronald Searle’s The Rake’s Progress and James Gillray’s Doublures of Caricature.

  2004, Brian Alfred Baker bequest: A significant collection of American comics. In 2007, due to a donation from Baker Tilly, the museum purchased a further significant collection of British comics from the 1950s and 1960s (1600 comics in total).

  2007, Donation of William Heath Robinson works by Simon Heneage: The collection features 260 drawings by William Heath Robinson. Following a summer exhibition in 2007, ‘Heath Robinson’s Helpful Solutions’, and after opening at premises in Little Russell Street – at a permanent home – co-founder of CAT and ex-chairman Simon Heneage donated 260 original artworks and sketches by William Heath Robinson, as well as Georgian prints by James Gillray and others, and a Bohn edition of James Gillray’s complete works.

  2007, Purchases with the aid of the Art Fund and the V&A Grant Purchase Fund: The museum received funding from the Art Fund and the V&A Purchase Fund to acquire items including:

  • Le Ministre d’Etat, an original caricature of Charles James Fox by James Gillray from the sale of Tony Banks collection
  • An original Private Eye poster from autumn 1961, drawn by Willie Rushton to advertise the publication of the new satirical magazine
  • The complete set of Ronald Searle’s bronze and silver medals
  • A James Gillray copper plate
  • Many other items purchased with matched fundraising over the past fifteen years.

  2009, Donations from artists’ estates: the families of Rowland Emett, JAK, Marc Boxer and Norman Thelwell donated original artwork to the museum.

  2010–2011, Ronald Searle bequests: A Night at Wrestling donated by Ronald Searle after CAT’S Searle exhibition, along with a number of other items. At Searle’s death in 2011, Ronald Searle’s son and daughter made further donations, including the artist’s drawing box and equipment. There are also a number of individual donations of works by Ronald Searle from private donors. The museums holds around 285 works relating to Ronald Searle including original artwork and designs, artist’s materials, lithographs, advertisement posters (c.40), pub glass advertisement (Lamb’s Navy Rum), homages to Searle by other cartoonists and the previously mentioned silver and bronze medals.

  2012, H. M. Bateman Family donation: the museum held an exhibition of work by H. M. Bateman titled The Man Who Went Mad on Paper. Diana Willis and Bateman’s family donate H. M. Bateman’s only Royal Academy exhibited drawing, The Mad Artist.

  2013, Douglas Glanville Jensen bequest: Around 275 works by the artist, mostly drawn animation cells and artist’s roughs.

  2014, Gift from the Art Fund: 84 cartoons and caricatures by George Rowland Halkett (1855-1918), many of which were included in the CAT World War I exhibition in 2014.

  2014, Robert S. Sherriff’s bequest: 900 cartoons donated by bequest from the Estate of Alexandra Sherriffs, mostly theatrical cartoons drawn in the late 1920s and 1930s. Note that these works were formally recorded in CAT acquisitions documentation in 2014, however the works were deposited in the museum in 2005. Works from the collection were exhibited in a dedicated show in 2013.

  2014, The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Collecting Cultures/Comic Creators funding: HLF awarded The Cartoon Museum £164,000 towards acquiring a wide range of British comic art dating from the late 1900s to the present. The Cartoon Museum’s Collecting Cultures/Comic Creators Project far exceeded the 100 items envisaged at the outset, with more than 400 items purchased. Many of the works were displayed for the opening exhibition at the new museum at Wells Street in 2019.

  2015, Bernheim bequest: Around 30-35 works by various artists including Trog, John Jensen, Dave Brown and German cartoonists Horst Haitzinger, Hans Steger and Hans Peter Wyss.

  2016, Estate of Malcolm Douglas: 297 works including comic pages from ‘Ham Dare’, ‘Street-Hogs’ and ‘Dan Dross’.

  2016, Roger Woolnough collection: Collection of 177 works by various artists, including James Gillray, Robert Dighton, George Cruikshank, JF Sullivan and Frederick Townsend. Bequeathed by Roger Woolnough through the Art Fund.

  2003–2023, Donations to the collection by trustees: including Lord Baker of Dorking, Martin Rowson, Steve Bell, Diana Willis, Simon Heneage, John Jensen, Mel Calman, Ann McMullan MBE, Pat Huntley, Nicholas Garland OBE, Patrick Holden, Oliver Preston, Paul ffolkes-Davis and Pat Huntley.

  2022, Donations by contemporary political cartoonists: a donation of over 150 original cartoons of Boris Johnson, and themes on Brexit, Covid and the Russo-Ukranian War to coincide with the museum’s exhibition, This Exhibition is a Work Event: The Tale of Boris Johnson (October 2022–April 2023).

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2023

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  The Cartoon Museum actively collects cartoon, caricature, comic and animation art dating from the 1700s to the present day.

  There are around 5,600 items in the CM collection (as of January 2023) stored across three locations: the Museum Store at 63 Wells Street, a store at the museum offices at 4 Margaret Street and a small selection of outsized objects at Big Yellow Storage in Camberwell.

  The museum also holds a Reference Library and Special Collections which consists of around 18,000 books and comics.

  The collection consists mostly of original works on paper or board as well as a small selection of ephemera (correspondence, photographs etc) and 3D objects. A small selection of these 3D objects are larger in scale, including: a Spitting Image puppet of Roy Hattersley, three 3D models of Heath Robinson machines (the pea machine, the self-creaming machine for cats and the wine-pouring machine), bound book of suppressed plates by James Gillray, an original bronze printing plate created by James Gillray and two tablecloths signed by cartoonists (one from the British Cartoonists Association, one from the National Cartoonists Society of America).

  The vast majority is of British origin, however the CM does collect international examples by influential cartoonists and comic artists and as such, there are some international artworks in the collection, primarily from France, USA.

  As noted, animation is included in the CM’s collection remit, however at present the CM’s collection of animation-related material is limited. The CM defines animation as the technique of photographing successive drawings or positions of puppets or models to create an illusion of movement when the film is shown as a sequence.

  The CM animation collection is currently limited to one box of animation-related items created by Douglas Granville Jensen, stored in Box B5.2. Currently, the museum accepts animation related items which relate to popular or well-known animations (for example we are currently considering a Captain Pugwash collection of items for donation). We consider offered donations but are not actively seeking out animation related items for collection. A more precise collecting policy for animation should be developed as part of the next Collections Development Policy.

  The CM began to collect digital-born artwork in 2022. A full Digital-Born Acquisitions Policy, detailing how digital-born works should be transferred, maintained, cared for and shared, is currently under development and is planned for completion in 2023. Once complete, the policy should attached as an appendix to this Collections Development Policy.

  The Cartoon Museum is currently undertaking an audit of the Collection and a cataloguing project of the Library and Special Collections. These projects will provide a comprehensive understanding of what is held in the Collection, Library and Special Collections and are taking place 2022–2025.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2023

  Licence: CC BY-NC