Willson (Richard)

c.1969

The original artwork for a ‘big head’ group portrait of the French President, Georges Pompidou (1911-1974), depicted as an old maid in wrinkled stockings and holding a handbag, seated on a park bench slightly turned away from a row of suitors from the three main British political parties, Edward Heath, Jeremy Thorpe and Harold Wilson, with Heath tentatively reaching out with a bunch of flowers. A faint pencil caption below the scene reads “Common Market Laugh In”. Pompidou was elected President of France in 1969, and was far more open to the idea of Britain joining the Common Market than his predecessor, Charles De Gaulle, who had fiercely resisted it for many years.

Richard Willson (1939-2011) began as a cartoonist for The Observer in 1968, before moving to The Times and Sunday Times in the early 1970s. His popular and distinctive work also frequently appeared in The Spectator, Washington Post, New Statesman, and New Scientist.