Ronald Ferns

English painter Ronald Ferns (14 October 1925 – 2 December 1997) was an English illustrator, designer, cartoonist and surrealist painter in oil and watercolour. He attended Saint Martin's School of Art, London. His first major official commission was a mural for the 1951 Festival of Britain, in the Country Pavilion, for the Milk Marketing Board.[citation needed] In the same year, he was also commissioned to create the scenic design for the premiere of Fate’s Revenge by the Ballet Rambert. [citation needed] Throughout the 1950s, he contributed witty line illustrations, decorations and cartoons to Lilliput, for which he also painted several covers in colour, Punch, Picture Post, Scope, and Good Housekeeping, for which he drew a regular series entitled "Semolina Silkpaws". He also illustrated a series of full-colour booklets for Guinness advertising campaigns. Other important advertising work included elegant watercolour covers for Fortnum & Mason catalogues.[citation needed] In the early 1960s, he moved with his wife Iris to St Ives in Cornwall, so he could diversify from "commercial art" into painting and other endeavours. As well as developing his noted series of surreal painti