The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 2: Reader’s Guide PART 1. Christina Scull

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СКАЧАТЬ made by Tolkien especially for the book, as well as maps, among which Thror’s Map is a ‘facsimile’ of an ‘antique’ map which figures in the story. He also designed the original binding for The Hobbit, and a dust-jacket – a stylized landscape of mountains and trees – which is still used on some editions of the book with only minor revisions.

      The first edition of The Hobbit contained only black and white art; but when colour illustrations were wanted for the American edition, Tolkien produced five paintings in July and August 1937: The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the Water, Rivendell, Bilbo Woke Up with the Early Sun in His Eyes, Bilbo Comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves, and Conversation with Smaug (Artist and Illustrator, figs. 98, 108, 113, 124, 133; Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, figs. 11, 23, 39, 64, 71). These are some of his finest work, produced while Tolkien was ‘divided between knowledge of my own inability [to draw] and fear of what American artists (doubtless of admirable skill) might produce’, in particular ‘the *Disney studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing)’ (letter to C.A. Furth, 13 May 1937, Letters, p. 17). See further, *The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

      Despite the success of his Hobbit art, Tolkien referred to it almost always with self-effacement: it was ‘indifferent’, ‘defective’, ‘not very good’. He lacked the time, while pressed with many academic and personal responsibilities, to practise and develop his painting and drawing to the point at which he might feel comfortable exposing it to public view. For his next book, *Farmer Giles of Ham, he turned to a professional artist, *Pauline Baynes, whose work he found a perfect complement to his text. After this Baynes became his illustrator of choice. He hoped that she might illustrate *The Lord of the Rings, but its limited budget made little allowance for art. Tolkien however, while writing The Lord of the Rings, made numerous rough sketches and several finished coloured pencil drawings to help him visualize topography and architecture. His painstakingly rendered picture of the Doors of Durin (Book II, Chapter 4) was redrawn by a blockmaker’s artist before publication; his even more elaborate ‘facsimile’ pages of the Dwarves’ Book of Mazarbul, with genuine stab holes and burn marks, proved too costly to reproduce; and the distinctive dust-jacket designs he made for The Lord of the Rings were set aside in favour of a uniform design for all three volumes, each with Tolkien’s Eye of Sauron–Ring inscription motif. See further, *The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

      Although Tolkien did not study art as an academic subject, he was aware of styles or movements such as Symbolism and Art nouveau, and had a keen interest in decoration and handicraft. There are few references to the ‘fine’ arts of painting and sculpture in his writings (*Leaf by Niggle notably excepted, in which the title character is a painter), but many to decorative art such as carving, weaving, jewellery, and metalwork (see especially *Smith of Wootton Major), as well as *calligraphy and artistic lettering, in which Tolkien himself was skilled. Throughout his life he was drawn to decoration: most of his later art consists of brightly coloured patterns and devices, drawn purely for enjoyment; and among his papers are several versions of a decorated tree, the ‘Tree of Amalion’, bearing various shapes of leaves and many flowers. These are visual representations of ‘the countless foliage of the Tree of Tales, with which the Forest of Days is carpeted’, as Tolkien wrote in his essay *On Fairy-Stories (*Tree and Leaf, p. 52), and they are related also to Niggle’s painting of a tree in Leaf by Niggle which had ‘all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different. … It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots’ (Tree and Leaf, pp. 75–6).

      *J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (1995) reproduces the widest range of Tolkien’s art, but only half of the images are in colour; with one exception, the colour is good. Artist and Illustrator mostly, but not entirely, supersedes *Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien (1979; 2nd edn. 1992), a collection of pictures which had appeared in a series of Tolkien calendars, with foreword and notes by Christopher Tolkien. The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (2011) and The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (2015) each reproduces in colour all relevant art known to the authors at the time of writing, including calligraphy and maps.

      Tolkien’s art has been variously exhibited; see: Catalogue of an Exhibition of Drawings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1976, for an exhibition held successively at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the National Book League, London, 1976–7); Catalogue of an Exhibit of the Manuscripts of JRRT (Marquette University Library, 1984); Drawings for ‘The Hobbit’ by J.R.R. Tolkien (Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1987); J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit Drawings, Watercolors, and Manuscripts (Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, 1987); J.R.R. Tolkien: Life and Legend (Bodleian Library, 1992); and The Invented Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: Drawings and Original Manuscripts from the Marquette University Collection (Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, 2004).

      A list of Tolkien’s published art is included in the second volume of the Reader’s Guide. See also Nancy-Lou Patterson, ‘Tree and Leaf: J.R.R. Tolkien and the Visual Image’, English Quarterly 7, no. 1 (Spring 1974); Priscilla Tolkien, ‘My Father the Artist’, Amon Hen 23 (December 1976); John Ellison, ‘Tolkien’s Art’, Mallorn 30 (September 1993); Michael Organ, ‘Tolkien’s Japonisme: Prints, Dragons, and a Great Wave’, Tolkien Studies 10 (2013); and Descriptive Bibliography, section E. On art inspired by Tolkien’s works, see *Illustration.

The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull with an introduction and brief explanatory texts, first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins, London, in October 2011, and in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, in September 2012. The volume contains every painting, drawing, and sketch known to the authors to have been produced by Tolkien to illustrate *The Hobbit, or for its maps, binding, and dust-jacket, or made by Tolkien for other purposes but which served as models or inspiration for his Hobbit art.

      A list of Tolkien’s published *art is included in the second volume of the Reader’s Guide.

The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull with an introduction and brief explanatory texts, first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins, London, and in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, both in October 2015. The volume contains every piece of art, including calligraphy and maps, known to the authors at the time of writing to have been produced by Tolkien in relation to *The Lord of the Rings.

      A list of Tolkien’s published *art is included in the second volume of the Reader’s Guide.

Arthur and the Matter of Britain. Tolkien enjoyed stories of King Arthur in his childhood reading, and remembered ‘a very deep desire to see and speak to a Knight of Arthur’s Court. If I had, I should have regarded him much as Peredur did. But that is a special case: the desire was in large part a desire to visit or see Past Time. Owing to the accidents of its mediaeval development Arthurian legends had taken on an historical guise. They did not occur “once upon a time”’ (*On Fairy-Stories (expanded edn. 2008), p. 286). Peredur is the protagonist of a Welsh romance dating at least to the thirteenth century. Tolkien also argued in On Fairy-Stories that it seemed ‘fairly plain that Arthur, once historical (but perhaps as such not of great importance), was also put into the Pot’ – that is, the ‘Cauldron of Story’. ‘There he was boiled for a long time, together with many other older figures and devices, of mythology and Faërie, and even some other stray bones of history (such as Alfred’s defence against the Danes), until he emerged as a King of Faërie’ (*Tree and Leaf, p. 30).

      While attending *King Edward’s School, Birmingham Tolkien read one of the major works of Arthurian СКАЧАТЬ