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

Anna Smol

~ Department of English, Mount Saint Vincent University

Anna Smol

Tag Archives: Mary Fairburn

Seeing and Studying Tolkien’s Art

22 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by Anna Smol in Research, Tolkien

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Bodleian Library, book illustrations, Maker of Middle-earth, maps, Mary Fairburn, Tolkien and art, Tolkien Art Index, Tolkien Studies (journal), Tolkien's art

Last week, I posted about a recently published article that I co-authored with my colleague Jeff MacLeod on Tolkien as artist and writer, and I mentioned some of the secondary sources that we used in that essay. Today, I want to supplement the bibliography in our essay with a couple of other resources and an upcoming event for anyone who is interested in seeing and studying Tolkien’s artwork.

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth

https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/image/0006/201993/750x293_Tolkien_AnnotatedMiddleearthmap_cropped.jpg

Bodleian Library, Oxford. Tolkien’s annotated map.

The exhibition that I am very much looking forward to is Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, running from June to October this year. This event brings together manuscripts from the Oxford collection and from the Tolkien Archive in Marquette University in the US and promises to show some of Tolkien’s watercolour illustrations for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, paintings in his Book of Ishness, maps, dust jacket designs, and even some personal artefacts such as boxes of paints and coloured pencils.

While I have been fortunate enough to work with some of Tolkien’s manuscripts, his original drawings are not usually accessible to the regular scholar. This will be a rare opportunity — if not to actually handle — at least to see some of his artwork firsthand. For those who can’t come to Oxford for this exhibition, the Bodleian will be publishing in June what they describe as a “richly illustrated book.”

The Tolkien Art Index

Here’s an extremely useful new resource for the study of Tolkien’s art:  The Tolkien Art Index.  The creation of Erik Mueller-Harder at Vermont Softworks, this database aims to list every published instance of Tolkien’s artwork. Each of the 463 items has a unique accession number and identifies the Marquette or Bodleian manuscript in which it appears. Ample tags allow you to search in various ways. For example, you can find images by medium (“blue pen”); content (“mountains-hills”); location (“Mordor”), and more — you have to sample it yourself to understand the full range of possibilities! All of the published sources are listed with dates, page numbers, and notes. The only thing that is lacking at the moment is permission to include thumbnail images of all of the items. Let’s hope this will be forthcoming, but even without that, The Tolkien Art Index should be an invaluable tool for anyone studying Tolkien’s artwork. If you are attending the Kalamazoo conference this spring, you can hear Erik speak about the Art Index in the 2018 Tolkien Seminar on May 9th.

The Illustrator Mary Fairburn and Tolkien

Jeff and I were pleasantly surprised to see another article on Tolkien and art in the latest volume of Tolkien Studies right next to our essay on Tolkien as an artist and writer. Paul Tankard writes about Tolkien’s correspondence with Mary Fairburn in his essay, “‘Akin to my own Inspiration’: Mary Fairburn and the Art of Middle-earth” (Tolkien Studies, vol. 14, pp. 133 – 154). Fairburn’s illustrations were featured in the 2015 Tolkien Calendar but were not published in Tolkien’s lifetime. Tankard’s essay examines Tolkien’s views on illustration and his opinions of various illustrators. Another essay to add to your bibliography if you’re studying Tolkien’s views on art and illustration!

 

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 @MedicalInkling: In a memoir, Dr. Havard describes his first meeting with #Tolkien in #CSLewis’s rooms in Magdalen College, #Oxford: 10 hours ago
  • RT @TolkienSociety: Tomorrow we are hosting our Seminar on the theme #Tolkien and the Gothic. Taking place in Leeds and online, you can joi… 10 hours ago
  • @lauravarnam Congratulations! Where will we be able to find them? 11 hours ago
  • Leeds is the place to be this coming week for Tolkien studies papers. Tolkien Society Seminar on Tolkien and the Go… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 day ago
  • RT @ekerson: Pay attention Canada! 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
%d bloggers like this: