• Blog: A Single Leaf
  • Welcome
  • Teaching
  • Research
  • Service
  • Contact

Anna Smol

~ Department of English, Mount Saint Vincent University

Anna Smol

Tag Archives: Catherine McIlwaine

Tolkien’s favourite landscape artist?

14 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by Anna Smol in Tolkien

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Bodleian Library, Catherine McIlwaine, J.R.R. Tolkien Artist & Illustrator, J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, landscape, Morgan Library, Tolkien & art, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth, watercolour, Weston Library, William Russell Flint

It’s finally time to wake this blog up. Last semester’s heavy teaching load, some eldercare responsibilities, and research commitments meant that I had to focus on other things, but I foresee a more reasonable schedule now.  I have so many hoarded items I’ve been meaning to write about, so let’s start pretty much where I left off last summer – with the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition at the Bodleian, now recently opened at the Morgan Library in New York.

I had the good fortune to visit the exhibition at the Bodleian Library in Oxford last summer. By all accounts, it was a huge success, running from June to October 2018. Tolkien archivist Catherine McIlwaine organized this exhibition of Tolkien’s paintings, letters, photos, maps, doodles, and other memorabilia. Once in the main exhibition hall in the Weston Library (part of the Bodleian network), you could wander at will or sit and gaze, and linger as long as you liked. Seeing Tolkien’s original paintings was a rare treat – up to now, a sight reserved for very few people. I was impressed by how finely detailed and precise his watercolours were. It was fun to see his desk and colouring pencils – on display was a full case of Polychrome coloured pencils in various shades of green – somehow I would have expected that. On another shelf, we could see his jars of Reeves’ poster colours.

One item that I found intriguing were the pictures that were hanging on the wall by his desk, loaned to the Bodleian by the Tolkien family.  According to Catherine McIlwaine’s magnificent book, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth, which catalogues the exhibition, Tolkien bought these prints by William Russell Flint when a student at Oxford and kept them for the rest of his life. They depict the Oxfordshire countryside and originally illustrated Matthew Arnold’s The Scholar Gipsy and Thyrsis. According to McIlwaine: “Tolkien continued to look at the paintings for the rest of his life and they hung in his rooms wherever he resided. They were among a select group of personal items which he took to his last residence, a small flat in Merton Street provided by Merton College in 1972” (p. 284).

You can find pictures of the prints on page 285 of McIlwaine’s book.  Below, you can view them as illustrations in a 1911 American edition of Arnold’s book, available through the Hathi Trust Digital Library. (Note that the colours of the book illustrations look darker than the pictures in McIlwaine’s book).

William Russell Flint. Watercolour. "The stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe"
William Russell Flint. Watercolour. "The Line of festal light in Christ Church hall"
William Russell Flint. Watercolour. "Its fir-topped hurst, its farms, its quiet fields"
William Russell Flint. Watercolour. "And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers"

Images:  William Russell Flint watercolour illustrations for Matthew Arnold’s The Scholar Gipsy and Thyrsis. Top left: “The stripling Thames at Bob-Lock-Hithe”; Top right: “The Line of Festal Lights in Christ Church Hall”; bottom left: “Its Fir-Topped Hurst, its Farms, its Quiet Fields”; bottom right: “And the Eye Travels Down to Oxford’s Towers.”  (Click on individual images to enlarge).

What instantly struck me when looking at the pictures – though I had to peer through glass at a far wall to see them – was that the style could have influenced some of Tolkien’s early watercolour landscapes. As it turns out, the same thought had already occurred to Catherine McIlwaine, who comments in her book that there’s a resemblance to Tolkien’s “King’s Norton from Bilberry Hill” (painted in 1913) and “Lambourn. Berks” (1912). The latter, according to Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, was a sketch Tolkien made on a walking tour (Artist & Illustrator, p. 17) and the former was an outdoor sketch as well. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare a young man’s sketches with a professional artist’s published work, but take a look at the two pictures below. What do you think? Is there a distinct influence, or is it a general stylistic resemblance that would have been shared by many watercolour landscape artists of the time?

Tolkien. Lambourn, Berks. Watercolour. Artist&Illus. fig 11
Tolkien, King's Norton from Bilberry Hill

Images:  left: Tolkien, Lambourn, Berks. Watercolour. Artist & Illustrator, fig. 11; right: Tolkien, King’s Norton from Bilberry Hill. Watercolour. Artist & Illustrator, fig 16. (Click on individual images to enlarge).

I’ll be posting more snippets about the exhibition, both in Oxford and New York, in the days ahead, but if you’re interested in a more extensive account (or if you’re looking forward to the New York version), I don’t think you can find a more thorough description than this post on the Tolkien Collector’s Guide, “Tolkien’s Maker of Middle-earth Exhibition at The Bodleian – A Retrospective.”

For further reading:

Catherine McIlwaine. Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2018.

The standard work on Tolkien’s art is Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator. HarperCollins, 2004.

In Scull and Hammond’s J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (pp.1483–1503), they included a list of published art by Tolkien, which they updated in July 2018 to include items in the Bodleian exhibition publications.  “Published Art by J.R.R. Tolkien, From the J.R.R. Tolkien Companion & Guide. Revised July 2018” [pdf]

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Tolkien art exhibition at the Bodleian

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by Anna Smol in Tolkien

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bodleian Library, Catherine McIlwaine, Smol and MacLeod, Tolkien & art, Tolkien Archive, Tolkien Archivist, Tolkien as artist and writer, Tolkien Studies (journal), Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth, Visualizing the Word, Weston Library

Sometimes it’s hard to tell which comes first: is it the illustration and then the text, or does the text come first and then the illustration?

That’s a question posed by Catherine McIlwaine, the Bodleian’s Tolkien Archivist, as she reviews some of Tolkien’s artwork with illustrator Alan Lee. And that’s exactly the question that my co-author Jeff MacLeod and I asked in our recent article published in Tolkien Studies (“Visualizing the Word: Tolkien as Artist and Writer“), which I’ve written about here.

You can see Catherine McIlwaine and Alan Lee looking at some of Tolkien’s paintings in the video below, celebrating the Bodleian Library’s new exhibit, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth.  The conversation about Tolkien’s art occurs from around 0:52 to 2:22, but the entire video contains enticing glimpses of what is now on display at the Weston Library (one of the Bodleian Libraries).

 

Those who were lucky enough to attend the launch and visit the Library in these first few days have published excited reports that seem to confirm what we’ve been reading in the reviews: that this is, as John Garth put it, “a once-in-a-generation” exhibition of artifacts, documents, and artwork. There’s lots to see, but one part that I am especially looking forward to is the original artwork, something that only very few people are normally allowed to examine in the Tolkien Archive.

Jeff and I have written about one example that demonstrates how Tolkien used his sketching to draft his text and the general interplay between image and text in his work. We only had room to discuss one manuscript example, but there would be many others. We also discussed, among other points, how Tolkien’s prose style and the expression of his theories are shaped by his visual practice. In other words, we argue that image does not necessarily come after text but that both image and text are integrally related in Tolkien’s creative imagination.

I’ll be in Oxford next month when I’ll be fortunate enough to see Tolkien’s original work, from doodles to finished art pieces. In the meantime I’ll be posting occasionally some reviews and information about the exhibit and Tolkien’s art.

How to find our article:

Jeffrey J. MacLeod and Anna Smol. “Visualizing the Word: Tolkien as Artist and Writer.” Tolkien Studies, vol. 14, 2017, pp. 115-131. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/tks.2017.0009.

Tolkien Studies is an annual publication that can be purchased from West Virginia University Press. If your library has a subscription to Project Muse, you can get a copy that way. If you don’t have the means to get a copy of the article, please let me know.

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Dr. Anna Smol

This site includes my blog, "A Single Leaf," and webpages about my research and teaching in Tolkien studies, medievalism, Old English, and higher education pedagogy. Creative Commons License: <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.

Twitter Updates

  • RT @LucyHoldsworth: Call for Papers! So excited to announce that @Megintransition, @TaylorWDriggers, Luise Rössel and I are putting togethe… 22 hours ago
  • @AranelParmadil Me, but sometimes I feel like I live like a hermit. 1 day ago
  • @geoffkerson @speght We got some from Gary Burrill’s office on Quinpool. 4 days ago
  • Having had no musical training at all, I found it fascinating to hear how knowledgeable people can analyze a piece… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago
  • RT @medievalatX: Glad to see that @stfxuniversity will be keeping masks in classrooms and labs this fall. This is an important step for in… 1 week ago
Follow @AnnaMSmol

Recent posts

  • Leeds is the place to be next week for Tolkien talks
  • Tolkien talks in May 2022 & reminders for July
  • April 2022 conference sessions on Tolkien
  • Tolkien Reading Day 2022: Love & Friendship
  • What did he really mean? Carpenter on Tolkien on Drama

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Anna Smol
    • Join 927 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Anna Smol
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: