Londoner Geoffrey Buchler, 54, has amassed around 80 political cartoons over 25 years. They are mainly works by contemporary newspaper illustrators, and range in value from £300 to £5,000.
His passion has been fuelled by personal contact with a number of contemporary artists. He says: “The great advantage in going to cartoonists and talking to them is being able to understand the story behind the picture.
“As a financial advisor by profession, I would not want to recommend that one’s pastime should be a substitute for a pension. Mine certainly isn’t. I am not buying primarily for investment, but I do try to obtain pieces in the best possible condition.
“However, I have been careful to never buy things that I don’t really like. It is unlikely that I will ever want to sell individual drawings, but I have been known to give them away as presents. I have a 17-year-old daughter who is interested in cartoons and feels that the collection is destined to pass to her!”
Cartoons first appeared as satirical prints at the end of the 18th century while newspaper cartoons came here from North America at the end of the 19th century. The first full-time editorial cartoonist in the UK was Francis Carruthers Gould, who worked for the Westminster Gazette in 1887.
The seeds of the collector’s interest began at 18, when his father wanted the original of a cartoon from Punch. He says: “It wasn’t until the early 1980s, many years later and after my father had died, that I saw the old issue of Punch and located the picture. I got in touch with the artist, Ed McLachlan, and bought the black-and-white drawing for around £250.”
Buchler believes the two most prominent British cartoonists today are Steve Bell (The Guardian) and Peter Brookes (The Times). One of his favourite caricatures is “The Crumbling Parliament” by Steve Bell. This Punch cover from Christmas 1996 shows the Front Bench and Opposition in the House of Commons not long before the Conservative Party’s demise in 1997. “I think I paid Steve £1,250 in 1996, but it would be worth a lot more now, at least £3,000,” says Buchler.
Other contemporary cartoonists include Ronald Searle, Ralph Steadman, Dave Brown (The Independent), Martin Rowson, Chris Riddell (New Statesman/Observer), Nicholas Garland (Telegraph) and Peter Shrank (Economist and Independent on Sunday).
In 1986 Buchler bought an original H.M. Bateman cartoon from the 1920s, “The Rollers”, for £1,800. It is now worth £5,000-plus. Three years ago he acquired another well-known H.M. Bateman drawing, “The Bachelor”, at Bonhams in London and paid £4,300 for it.
He says: “Another great contemporary illustrator is John Jensen, who is now retired. Jensen, who can draw in the style of H.M. Bateman, produced a cartoon on Valentine’s Day 1987 to mark the 100th anniversary of Bateman’s birth in 1887. ‘The Man who sent a Valentine Card To’ depicts Margaret Thatcher with the political characters of the time, like Neil Kinnock and Ted Heath.
“I bought this from John directly in 1987 and I paid him about £400. It was a Punch front cover in full colour. Today it must be worth three to four times that.”
While Buchler concentrates almost exclusively on contemporary cartoonists, he is content to own a “very nice” James Gillray from 1795, “Light Expelling Darkness”. It shows William Pitt expelling the dark forces of the Whigs and Radicals, though in fact drenched in irony.
“I bought this at Bonhams in 2003, for £4,000, including buyer’s premium,” he says.
“I was renowned as the under-bidder for another Gillray in the same sale, which went for approximately £12,500. Gillray, the father figure of the modern political cartoon, produced ‘Plum Pudding in Danger’ in 1805 – arguably the most famous political caricature of all time. It depicts Napoleon and Nelson dividing up Europe – represented by the pudding – and attracted the highest price ever paid for a Gillray.”
Buchler keeps his drawings, mainly framed, on the walls of his office in Westminster. He points out: “If you go to the British Museum you will find that everything is kept in drawers. That is the way to keep things, but of course nobody can actually enjoy them. But I do think you must keep cartoons in a dark environment, correctly framed and mounted.
“The cartoons that will increase most dramatically in value are those in an auction house sale somewhere that are wrongly catalogued or out of vogue at a particular time. I personally know of very few that come up at auction. The originals belong to the illustrators themselves.”
