Richard Chopping was a British writer and painter, best known as the original illustrator of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, including From Russia with Love and Goldfinger – a commission that had been declined by his former friend and subsequent arch-rival, Lucien Freud. His distinctive style and immaculate mastery of tromp l’oeil led Fleming – who was a…
By Jim Wright Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966), the last of Ian Fleming’s 14 novels and short story collections, is often considered the least of the lot. After all, the first edition weighs in at just 95 pages, and the title seems increasingly off-putting. That’s a shame because the two short stories of the…
On 18 March 1959 Fleming had written to Richard Chopping about the cover he had undertaken for Goldfinger, saying that: “The new jacket is quite as big a success as the first one and I do think [Jonathan] Cape have made a splendid job of it”. Once again, Chopping was asked to provide the cover…
They say never judge a book by its cover, but book covers do a much of the heavy lifting to help to sell a book. None more so than Richard ‘Dicky’ Chopping’s iconic artwork for Ian Fleming’s Bond novels. His first commission for them was From Russia With Love and up until then, the previous covers…
Today marks a very special day, for on this day in 1957 Ian Fleming met a young illustrator that was to prove pivotal in the lives of both men and the future of the James Bond novels. That illustrator was Richard Wasey Chopping. We spoke to one of Chopping’s trustees – Jon Lys Turner –…
When artists Richard Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller died in their nineties, their friend Jon Lys Turner inherited an extensive personal archive. When he began to look through it, he discovered letters and other material that revealed Chopping and Wirth-Miller to be a previously missing link in the twentieth-century art world and pivotal figures in the…
Of Richard Chopping’s many beautiful illustrations, paintings and book jackets, none stand out more as his work for the 1955 volume 15 edition of the yearly The Saturday Book. These books of miscellany – published from 1941 to 1975, reaching 34 volumes – provided literary and artistic commentary about life in Britain during the Second World War…
by MW Bewick It is only a matter of time. Sooner or later, if you get talking to the locals in Wivenhoe, Essex, someone will namedrop Richard Chopping: “Oh, Dicky and Denis,” they will say. “You don’t know about Dicky and Denis? If you’d been here when they were here… Wivenhoe was much more, well,…
Sold at Christies in 2011 for 500 pounds ($799), this is a beautiful example of Chopping’s Trompe l’oeil style. Not much is known about this painting unfortunately, but perhaps more information will come to light. Several Chopping motifs are present however, including the wood background and the natural world. Botanists out there might be able…
No doll’s house is complete without a set of 1st edition James Bond novels! These are handcrafted 1/12th scale complete set of miniature replicas of all fourteen of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books. Each miniature measures a mere 9/16″ x 13/16″ x 1/8″ in size and reproduce the dustjacket cover art of all the original Jonathan…
The Fourth of June is the first novel by David Benedictus. This title was reviewed upon publication by Ian Fleming, who was an Old Etonian with David. In Fleming’s Sunday Times review he described it as ‘One of the most brilliantly written books since the war.‘ Fleming’s review of the book was complimentary of the writer but admittedly seemed out of…
Article by Ben Williams “For me, this is all the world. There is beauty, there is ugliness, and there is death.” – Stromberg, The Spy Who Loved Me. Whilst Stromberg himself was not a Fleming creation, these words sum up the visceral appeal of the dust covers commissioned by him and executed with panache by…
Richard Chopping was educated at Gresham’s in Holt, where Benjamin Britten and the future Cambridge spy Donald Maclean were his contemporaries. His artistic education came afterwards, at Cedric Morris’s East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, where Lucian Freud was also studying. Chopping was more factotum than pupil but learnt by observing Morris work, although…
Francis Bacon provides an interesting footnote into how Richard Chopping ended up creating the James Bond dust jackets for Ian Fleming; it was at one of Bacon’s art exhibitions that Ann Fleming, a close friend of Bacon, made the introduction. Chopping recalled: “He [Bacon] took her [Ann Fleming] upstairs to see mine, which was very good of him,…
Heads, Bodies and Legs is a children’s book written and illustrated by the late Richard Chopping and Dennis Wirth-Miller. Mike Simkin writes to The Guardian in 2008: “Having been one of his students at Colchester School of Art (1958-62). Nobody gave more encouragement with their work and spirit for life. He never spoke of his illustration work…
Here is a poem that Chopping contributed to the Grasshopper in 1931: O DRAGON-FLY, you lovely thing, I love to see you on the wing; Oh, when I hear you whirring by, I raise an aching, weary eye From off my tiring, awful task, To gaze upon your lovely mask, Your slender legs, your rainbow…
Chopping’s love of nature was evident in Butterflies in Britain (1943) and his Butterflies book was a best seller, in print for many years. Best known for his jackets for Ian Fleming’s James Bond books he also illustrated a number of children’s books for Noel Carrington. Typically concise was his description of the Painted Lady, which:…
Ian Fleming had a lifelong fascination with flowers and this motif would permeate many of his books and corresponding artwork for years to come. His first and only poetry collection, privately printed in 1928, was titled The Black Daffodil (unfortunately no copies exist today). His good friend Ivar Bryce remarked on reading The Black Daffodil: “He read me…
After Ian Fleming‘s death in 1964, Richard Chopping published – on Angus Wilson’s recommendation – The Fly. This flits between an office’s variously embroiled staff, including widowed caretaker Mrs Macklin, “a woman of warthog sensibility” whose feckless elder children consider, at the outset, inflating an abandoned condom near a pixie-hatted sibling. “Tears squeeze out of…
First edition copies of Ian Fleming’s 007 books are among the top lots in an auction being held in Benton. The titles, including For Your Eyes Only, From Russia With Love and Dr No, went under the hammer with Village Auctions on Saturday August 17 and were expected to fetch up to £1,000 in total. Auctioneer Malcolm Barry said: “I was…
Artistic Licence Renewed 