One of the great cartoonists of the 20th century was Ralph Sallon whose caricatures of famous people survive and are widely collected.

Sallon was born Rachmiel David Zelon at Sheps, near Warsaw, in what was then Russian-controlled Poland, on 9th December 1899, a twin and one of eight children of Isaac Meyer Zelon, a tailor specialising in military uniforms and women's clothes.

The family fled Tsarist persecution and came to England in 1904, joining the Jewish community in the East End of London, moving to Hornsey when Sallon was 11 and he attended Crouch End School, recalling later: "I was always drawing at school, the pupils, masters . . . everyone and everybody."

He was largely self-taught as a caricaturist and by 1932 he was working for many publications and in 1943 he began contributing regularly to the Daily Herald, for the first time on a fixed salary. In 1948 he became staff caricaturist on the Daily Mirror where he remained until 1991 during which time his work was admired by the Queen Mother who personally recommended him for an MBE in 1977.

Sallon liked to draw from life and often worked alongside the press photographers outside London hotels, dashing off a sketch with the stub of a pencil before his target disappeared in a taxi. He also worked in advertising for the GPO and others, producing anniversary books of caricatures of auto and motor cycle racing personalities for Shell-Mex/BP and two series of Vanity Fair-style full-colour caricature prints of eminent lawyers.

"The art of observing is to forget yourself," Sallon once explained: "The art of caricature is not to think of yourself in relation to anyone else but to think of the other person only. Your whole personality must go outwards, never inwards."

Sallon retired from the Daily Mirror in 1991 after being involved in a road accident. He died in Barnet, Hertfordshire, on 29th October 1999, aged 99.

His caricatures included most of the famous people of his day and he drew this one of Raymond Mays around 1958 as part of the series for Shell-Mex/BP. The caption reads:

Raymond Mays, father of the E.R.A. and B.R.M., will be remembered mainly as a hill climb exponent and his successes at Shelsley Walsh are legion (he first held the record as far back as 1933). As time trial holder of the Mountain Course and the Campbell circuit at Brooklands as well as Crystal Palace, Mays recorded many great wins for the E.R.A.

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