Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

This summer The Salisbury Museum, on the eve of the release of the 25th Bond movie No Time to Die, celebrates the life and work of writer, illustrator and teacher Richard Chopping (1917 – 2008). Chopping was best-known for illustrating the original book covers for James Bond. It will run from 17 May to 3 October 2021.

Richard Chopping was a master of the trompe-l’oeil technique, producing highly realistic three-dimensional images. It was this distinctive style that led him to be commissioned by Ian Fleming to illustrate nine of the James Bond book covers from 1957 to 1966.

The exhibition features some of the original working drawings for the books, including the striking skull design for Goldfinger – one of Chopping’s personal favourites, and a commission that had been declined by his former friend and subsequent arch-rival, Lucien Freud.

The designs for the Bond covers were an instant success, leading Fleming to describe Chopping as ‘a totally brilliant artistic collaborator!’ However, the work overshadowed his other achievements as an author and skilled illustrator of natural history and children’s books. Chopping was also a well-respected teacher at Colchester School of Art in the 1950s and the Royal College of Art from 1961 until 1983.

The exhibition looks at his entire output, positioning his work for Fleming firmly within the context of his 40-year career. Highlights from his early years include his illustrations for Butterflies in Britain (1943) and the collection of children’s short stories Mr Postlethwaite’s Reindeer (1945). There are also delicate wild flower drawings, prepared for an ambitious 22 volume series on British wild flowers by Penguin, which was abandoned due to spiralling costs.

In 1965 Chopping published his first novel, The Fly, which was a success despite being described by one reviewer as a ‘just about the most unpleasant book of the year’. The cover design mirrors its content – showing a fly drinking at the rim of the staring eye of the dead lead character. The image looked part of the James Bond family which helped with the novel’s popularity. The original design and preparatory studies can be seen in the exhibition.

Chopping’s life partner was the landscape painter Denis Wirth-Miller (1915 -2010). They lived in Wivenhoe near Colchester for over sixty years, where they regularly entertained a wide circle of artistic friends, among them significant twentieth century cultural figures, from Francis Bacon to Benjamin Britten, John Minton to Stephen Spender, and Nina Hamnett to Noel Coward.

The exhibition is formed out of Chopping’s personal archive which, on his death, was passed to former student and close friend Jon Lys Turner. Turner has documented the fascinating and often turbulent lives of Wirth-Miller and Chopping in his highly acclaimed biography The Visitors Book (2016), and some more personal items from the archive will be included in the exhibition. And with many works which have never previously been displayed, this exhibition will be a genuine treasure-trove for the Chopping cognoscenti and for those discovering his work for the first time. They reveal a talented artist whose work should perhaps be as well-known as the fictional spy he helped make famous.

Images © The Estate of Richard Chopping and used with permission