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By RICHARD HOLLEDGE

Courtesy of the Cartoon Museum.

‘The Queen at the Queen Vic’ (2002) by Wally Fawkes (aka Trog).

London

To celebrate her 21st birthday in April 1947, the British magazine Punch commissioned a cartoon of Princess Elizabeth. Drawn by E.H. Shepard, better known for his whimsical illustrations of Winnie the Pooh, she is in a summery dress, clutching a bouquet from her grateful subjects—an array of fairies with messages reading Happiness, Peace, Prosperity. In its sweet way it was a breakthrough. It was the first depiction of the future queen in cartoon form and reflects a respect for the monarchy that would be inconceivable today.

Or does it?

As one of the many events to celebrate Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, London’s Cartoon Museum is staging “Her Maj: 60 Years of Unofficial Portraits of the Queen,” which displays work by 30 members of that most independent-minded, left-leaning, antiestablishment bunch: British newspaper and magazine cartoonists. Many would see themselves in the tradition of James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, who traduced politicians and monarchs alike with boisterous savagery in the 18th and 19th centuries. Kenneth Baker, one of Margaret Thatcher’s ministers (himself cruelly satirized as an obsequious snail) and now an avid cartoon collector, notes with considerable relish: “The King Georges were shown fornicating, vomiting and defecating. There was no quarter.”

But as the museum’s curator Anita O’Brien says: “Even before the queen came to the throne, caricatures of the royal family had become out of bounds. In 1923, when the queen’s father and mother married, Punch depicted them taking off in a plane—but only from behind. When George VI became king in 1936, the magazine reproduced the same cartoon. It had published nothing else of the royal couple in between.

“That tradition stayed with the queen,” says Ms. O’Brien. “She does not appear at all in the early cartoons. She would be hidden in a coach or shown from behind or, at best, in profile.”

In a Michael Cummings sketch of the coronation in 1953, an American is seen daydreaming about its panoply of horses, carriages and guards—but of the new queen, not a glimpse. In fact, the drawing tells us more about British stereotyping of Americans and their predilection for the Royal Family.

“Stop, Elmer, stop!” says his wife. “You’re dreaming that un-American dream again.”

The attitude changed in 1968 when Prince Philip persuaded a reluctant queen to let the television cameras behind palace doors for a fly-on-the-wall program. What mystique the family had was lost overnight as it was revealed in all its splendor—and its ordinariness.

The anarchic Ralph Steadman immediately portrayed the royals as the dysfunctional family next door for the satirical magazine Private Eye. The queen is in an apron; a lank-haired Charles is hunched over a guitar; his lumpy sister, Anne, looks on grumpily while their brother Andrew picks his nose. Carl Giles of the Sunday Express felt he could now show the royal couple at home in vast, separate four-poster beds or at breakfast in their bathrobes.

Despite this liberation the queen remains a passive figure, sought out only if there is a crisis in the Commonwealth, a row over royal finances or a controversial state occasion such as the visit of the much-reviled Japanese Emperor Hirohito in 1971. At the formal dinner, Mac of the Daily Mail has a manservant placing a boot on Hirohito’s plate. Philip says to him: “I don’t care what you ate during the war, Perkins, the Emperor will have venison like the rest of us.”

We don’t know how the queen reacts, because her back is to the observer.

Come the 1990s, the press and the public turned against the royals as they became mired in financial woes and riven by the divorce of Charles and Diana. But even then, the monarchy—the institution rather than the erring royals—was portrayed more in sorrow than satire. Nicholas Garland showed its members as an Endangered Species, bereft in long grass like hunted animals poised on extinction.

Surprisingly perhaps, unkind images of the queen are few. Trog, aka Wally Fawkes, has her as a jolly knockabout figure with tombstone teeth pulling pints in the bar of the TV soap “EastEnders,” but the angry brigade, Martin Rowson and Steve Bell of the Guardian and Dave Brown of the Independent, emphasize the grotesque. Mr. Rowson shows the queen in 1987 with curling lips and a bulbous nose receiving Margaret Thatcher, but the target is not Her Majesty but the then prime minister—a sharp-nosed harpy with Cruella de Vil talons. Even the royal pet corgi is snarling at her as if a surrogate for its mistress’s irritation.

Peter Brookes of the London Times, perhaps the cleverest of the contemporary lot, says: “It is when the queen is involved with politics that the stories crop up. That’s why the Gillrays and Rowlandsons had a go—the monarchy was political in those days and a fair target. I am ambivalent about the monarchy. My head tells me that it is a nonsense but my heart completely disagrees. That’s why I don’t actively seek reasons for drawing her, because I know I shall be pulling my punches.”

One of his contributions to the exhibition has Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip dressed to the nines in a song-and-dance parody of Irving Berlin’s “We’re a Couple of Swells.”

“I know it’s gentle,” he says, “but there is nothing to be vicious about. There’s no point in putting an exhibition together of attacks on the queen, because you’d just have bare walls.”

Maybe the attitude to Her Maj is summed up by Martin Honeysett, who portrayed the Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip heroically line dancing during the state visit to Ireland in 2011.

An onlooker says: “Well, I think the Queen is trying really hard.”

Mr. Holledge is a freelance arts writer based in the U.K.

A version of this article appeared February 22, 2012, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Too Gentle on the Queen?.

By EILEEN GUNN

Bored with management consulting, Gabriel Turner turned his love for his native Uruguay’s beef into a passionate, more entrepreneurial career.

Mr. Turner, who was born in Uruguay but moved to the U.S. as a toddler, started out at a large consulting firm after college. After a few years, he found he wasn’t getting the breadth of experience he’d expected. “I wasn’t passionate about it, and it wasn’t something I saw myself doing forever,” he says.

By March 2007, he was having serious second thoughts. Around the same time, he also had a steak dinner that would seal his second act. The San Francisco restaurant where he dined had posted a sign saying it served Uruguayan grass-fed beef from a company called Estancia.

Mr. Turner had vacationed on his uncle’s Uruguayan cattle ranch, and held his native country’s beef in high esteem. He’d also taken classes in food science and international food policy as an undergrad at the University of California at Berkeley, sparking his interest in sustainable food. He believed Uruguay’s free-range ranching techniques fit that trend; he’d even brought the idea up to his dad, seeking fatherly advice. But his father said he couldn’t see the concept working. So when Mr. Turner saw the restaurant’s sign, he was intrigued that someone else had found a way to do it.

He spent the next several weeks trying to track down Estancia’s owner, Bill Reed, leaving numerous voice mails in the hopes of landing a meeting. Finally, Mr. Reed agreed to meet for coffee in early April. Amid a conversation touching on everything from Mr. Reed’s expansion plans, to their mutual interest in eco-food writer Michael Pollan, to sustainable food, Mr. Turner became convinced that he wanted to work with Mr. Reed. “He told me he didn’t have a job [open], but I walked away thinking if I pushed, maybe there could be one,” Mr. Turner recalls.

The two kept in touch. And a month later in one of their chats, Mr. Reed mentioned that he wanted to persuade customers that beef from free-range cows in South America had a smaller environmental impact as beef from industrial U.S. farms — despite the greater shipping distances. Mr. Turner offered to crunch the numbers for him free.

Mr. Reed was impressed. “I finally realized that his understanding of the industry and our product would help him sell our program to often skeptical butchers and chefs,” Mr. Reed says. In July 2007, Mr. Reed offered him a job in Los Angeles. Saying yes meant major changes for Mr. Turner — including a 60% pay cut and leaving behind his life in San Francisco.

He set to work peddling beef to restaurants and gourmet grocery stores, while also staging cooking demonstrations, talking with the local food press, and helping to organize educational trips to Uruguay for chefs. In consulting, “I didn’t get to know the big picture of what a department or company was doing,” he says. “Here, I have my hands in everything.”

He visited butchers to learn from them so he would be able to speak more knowledgeably about different cuts of meat. He read up on sustainable agriculture. And he had to learn how to crack a new market. That wasn’t always easy; after a particularly bad day chasing fruitless leads, he recalls thinking, “I’m not a good salesperson.”

Today, 30 Los Angeles restaurants and specialty markets carry Estancia beef, says Mr. Turner. Meanwhile, Mr. Turner has enrolled at Harvard Business School to hone the skills he needs to continue on his career path and to learn about sustainable business more formally.

He is keeping in close touch with Mr. Reed while he is at school. For starters, he is expanding on the first project he did for Mr. Reed, developing a detailed carbon-footprint report for Estancia. And when Mr. Reed brings his product to the East Coast, something he hopes to do in 2009, Mr. Turner plans to help with the marketing and business development.

Mr. Turner, now 25, says he might stay with Estancia, but “could see starting my own company,” after graduation. “The more I think about it, the more I’d like it to be in the sustainable foods industry and working with Uruguay if possible.”

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D5

By ERIC FELTEN

The end of March saw two new albums by well-established (which is nicer than saying long-in-the-tooth) pop artists—Madonna’s “MDNA,” and Lionel Richie’s “Tuskegee.” Madonna’s disc of new rave electronica debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart. Mr. Richie’s disc—a collection of his old hits, but now country-fried with Nashville stars—came in at No. 2. Then something remarkable happened. Madonna achieved a notoriety even more embarrassing than her commodified sexuality—her disc took one of the biggest tumbles ever for an album opening at the top. Second-week sales collapsed by more than 86%. And in the weeks since, the decline has only deepened, with “MDNA” now languishing at No. 34 on the chart. Mr. Richie’s record, by contrast, climbed to No. 1, where it has held pride of place for the last two weeks.

Eric Palma

What explains Madonna’s epic fail and Mr. Richie’s surprise success?

It can’t be entirely a matter of promotion. After all, in the lead-up to her disc’s release, Madonna had no less a showcase than the Super Bowl halftime. In a pageant that could have been choreographed by Caligula in collaboration with the Beijing Olympic committee, she featured the lead single from the new album (a song that enjoyed added attention thanks to the obscene gesture delivered by a guest rapper). Think of the show as an informercial for “MDNA”: Given what advertising time costs during the Super Bowl, it’s been estimated that Madonna’s halftime spot was a promotional opportunity worth more than $80 million.

Mr. Richie’s televised promotion was rather modest by comparison—he appeared for an hour on the Home Shopping Network.

Nor does the quality of the music explain it all. Those who go in for Madge’s sort of stuff haven’t been howling that her newest installment of computer-generated thumping isn’t up to snuff. As for Mr. Richie’s collection, though nothing extraordinary, it’s a pleasant reworking of his standard repertoire. (And before you scoff at an aging soul crooner trying twang on for size, keep in mind that the melodic pop Mr. Richie specializes in translates well to the melody-friendly language of country music.)

So what explains the dramatic divergence in the discs’s fortunes? The answer, I think, can be found in the basic question of old vs. new. Mr. Richie found a way to freshen up his “greatest hits.” Madonna is trying to sell new music. Fans of long-established artists may tolerate new works, may even buy them, but rarely do so with the enthusiasm they reserve for the back catalog. Typical is the friend who bragged to me last month she had scored good seats for a coming Bruce Springsteen concert—who then rolled her eyes and said with resignation, “Though, I hear he’s doing lots of material off his new CD….”

Why is it so hard for veteran stars to sell their abundant fans on new music?

Exceptions are rare—Cher scored No. 1 singles more than 33 years apart (“I Got You Babe” in 1965 and “Believe” in 1999). Louis Armstrong managed to keep adding hits to his catalog throughout his long career. Pops was well into his 60s when, in May 1964, he displaced the Beatles from the top of the Billboard singles chart, a spot they had owned for more than three months. Maybe Madonna should cut a cover of “Hello, Dolly.”

Even a songwriting performer of Duke Ellington’s stature and endurance saw his hit-smithing fizzle. When Ellington’s faltering career was revived at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, it was not because of the new suite he had written for the occasion, but thanks to a rollicking performance of a decades-old standby, “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue.”

One would think that legendary artists would have every advantage needed to put across new hits—they are brands, after all, with large and loyal consumer bases. So why do they struggle so with new product lines? Is it that performers lose their knack for good new tunes? Or is the fault with us, the listeners, that as we get older we lose our ability to connect with new music? Maybe learning to like a song is like learning a new language—it gets harder as we age.

I suspect both play a part—the muse gets weary and the audience gets diffident. But there could also be a Catch-22 at work: If the established musician does something really fresh, her audience is unhappy she’s strayed from what they know and like. But if she keeps doing new songs in the same vein as the old, why should the listener bother with the new release, the old favorites being the perfect expression of the old style?

Mr. Richie managed to escape the conundrum by doing the old favorites in a new way. We’ll see if Madonna is ultimately driven to adopt the same strategy—though I shudder to think how “Like a Virgin” will sound with fiddle and steel guitar.

A version of this article appeared May 4, 2012, on page D10 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: When Old Stars Try to Be New Again.