Roy Stewart Raymonde

About

Roy Raymonde was born on 26 December 1929 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, the son of Juliana Patricia Quinn and Barry Raymonde, an advertising agent and theatrical impresario who died of pneumonia in 1938. After his father's death the family moved around the country, Raymonde later recalling that "I was educated on and off at sixteen different schools up and down the country, culminating to everybody's surprise in a scholarship to an art school." In 1944 he went to Harrow School of Art, where one of his teachers was Gerard Hoffnung, but in 1946 he left to work in advertising. In 1948 Raymonde was called up for National Service, and spent time in Malaya.

On leaving the army in 1950, Raymonde became an illustrator for a Fleet Street advertising agency, and also began freelancing as a cartoonist for such publications as the Daily Mirror, Daily Sketch, Star, Men Only and Fashion Weekly. He became a full-time cartoonist around 1960, after selling his first cartoon to Punch. In 1963 he described himself as "the cartoonist who more people don't know than any other cartoonist I know," but he quickly became established, and in 1966 was voted CCGB Feature Cartoonist of the Year.

From 1969 to 1972 Raymonde contributed regular features to the Sunday Telegraph, including "Patsy & John" "The Bergs", "Them", "Boffins at Bay", "Raymonde's Blooming Wonders" and "Raymonde's Rancid Rhymes". He also contributed to Reader's Digest, Mayfair, Playboy (USA and Germany) from 1971, and Punch - including covers and illustrations for "Doc Brief" from 1985 to 1988. From 1988 to 1991 he drew covers and illustrations for the short-lived revival of Time & Tide.

In 1996 Raymonde was awarded the Gold Prize at the Kyoto International Cartoon Exhbition. He worked in many media, including watercolour, gouache, pen and brush, and admired Tomi Ungerer, Quentin Blake and Adolf Born. Raymonde retired in 2003, after a fall, and died Essex 14 September 2009.

• Ian J. Scott (ed) British Cartoonists Year Book 1964 (London, 1963), p.130.
• Mark Bryant Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Cartoonists and Caricaturists (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000), p.180.
• Mark Bryant "Roy Raymonde - Cartoonist noted for his work in Punch and Playboy", The Independent, 19 October 2009, p.34.

Holdings

Description

22 uncatalogued originals [PU1812 - 1833]

Date

60s