Tag Archives: Tolkien & art

Viewing and Re-Viewing Tolkien’s Art

17 Sunday Feb 2019

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The Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition in Oxford last summer and now at the Morgan Library in New York turns a spotlight on Tolkien as an artist. Being able to see a range of his work, from his patterned doodles on newspaper crossword pages to his Hobbit illustrations, demonstrates how visual art was integral to his creative imagination. There’s something special about seeing the art in person, as if you can move one step closer to the actual hand that produced the work. And sometimes a visit can give you a chance to see the artwork in a new light.

One exhibit that surprised me was Tolkien’s sketchbook opened to the picture, “Alder by a stream.”  I had seen the reproduction in Hammond and Scull’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator (fig. 7) and it’s in Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth (page 129).  Seeing it in real life, though, revealed a smaller notebook than I had imagined, which made the actual watercolour a lovely little pastoral image. (It measures 90 x 130 mm / 3.5 x 5.2 inches). And it was only then that I realized that it was painted around 1906, when Tolkien was still in his early teens.

This image of “Alder by a stream” by Anthony Burdge comes from the New York Tolkien Conference Facebook page. You can see many more photos of the New York show on their public site.

And here’s another image that I wish I could go back to re-view, Tolkien’s illustration of Rivendell.

"Rivendell" by Tolkien
Rivendell, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Those of you who can go to the Morgan Library in New York to see it in person, or even those of us who will make do with a reproduction now have another fact to incorporate into our viewing.  Recently in brief comments by Christopher Tolkien on the occasion of his visit to the Aubusson tapestries illustrating some of Tolkien’s artwork – another event that recognizes Tolkien as an illustrator – he told a story of how one night when he was a child he came to his father while he was painting the image of Rivendell and what happened then. You can hear the story at 3:45 in the video below (in French, with English and Spanish subtitles).

Christopher Tolkien and the “Aubusson weaves Tolkien” project
https://youtu.be/rQmh_Sfq88Y

How can we look at “Rivendell” without thinking of the child’s tear and the father’s patient kindness that are forever part of the image now, for me anyway. I wonder if some people visiting the Morgan Library will think of this late-night scene between Christopher and his father when looking at “Rivendell.”

Detail from Rivendell

Edit, Feb. 18: I have heard from some people that they are finding it difficult or impossible to read the English subtitles in the above video. For a transcript of the subtitles as they appear in the video, click here.

The Morgan Library along with the New York Tolkien Fellowship are sponsoring a series of talks to accompany the exhibition, and I’ll post details of these along with a few other commentaries on the exhibit in a day or two. For now, though, I’ll take one more look back at the Bodleian version of the exhibition, where a series of talks also took place. One of these featured myth specialist Marina Warner and Tolkien scholars Dimitra Fimi and Verlyn Flieger. Their discussion was wide-ranging: language and mythology and the history of fantasy and so many other things. But at one moment in the Q & A, the talk turned to Tolkien’s artwork and its influence on his writing.

At around 1:07:10 in the video linked below, the speakers discuss the importance of maps and other images to Tolkien’s creative process, and then in a response to a question about the role of images, Verlyn Flieger (at around 1:09:45) gives a brief example to explain how Tolkien “is writing to the image.”

Oxford Podcasts: Mythopoeia: Myth-Creation and Middle-earth. https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/mythopoeia-myth-creation-and-middle-earth

I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence, but Professor Flieger’s example of the sketch of Cirith Ungol drawn in the margins of a manuscript draft is exactly the image that my co-author Jeff MacLeod and I discussed in our Tolkien Studies article, “Visualizing the Word: Tolkien as Artist and Writer” (vol. 14, 2017, pp. 115-31). As Professor Flieger is one of the editors who oversaw the publication of our article, I’m hoping she was channelling our argument!  You can read more about our essay here. 

For more on the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibit, see my previous post a few days ago, “Tolkien’s Favourite Landscape Artist?” and from last June, “Tolkien Art Exhibit at the Bodleian.”

Tolkien’s favourite landscape artist?

14 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by in Tolkien

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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).

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?

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]

Tolkien art exhibition at the Bodleian

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

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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.

 

A Look Back at The New York Tolkien Conference

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Conferences, Medievalisms, Research, Tolkien

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New York Tolkien Conference banner. Image by Luke Spooner

banner image by Luke Spooner

When I heard that a Tolkien conference was going to be held in New York City last month, of course I paid attention, as I find any reason to visit New York a welcome one. When I investigated further and saw the list of presenters — Janet Brennan Croft, Kristine Larsen, Nicholas Birns, Laura Lee Smith, Chris Vaccaro, Dawn Walls-Thumma, and others who kept getting added to the roster —  I was convinced I had to go. The conference gave me a great opportunity to talk about my research on Tolkien’s art, and I was also pleased to be invited to participate in the Women in Middle-earth roundtable (more on my sessions below). Plus, as with most conferences, it was a chance to catch up with friends and meet new people.

Organized by Anthony Burdge and Jessica Burke, the conference featured Janet Brennan Croft as the Scholar Guest of Honour. Janet’s keynote, “Barrel-Rides and She-Elves: Audience and ‘Anticipation’ in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Trilogy,” started off the day’s proceedings. Janet pointed out the challenges that Jackson faced in making The Hobbit, which is supposed to be a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, but was made after what is supposed to be its sequel. Following me? If not, you can always look up a version of Janet’s talk, complete with diagrams illustrating the internal and composition chronologies of versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, here.

Janet Brennan Croft

Janet Brennan Croft, Scholar Guest of Honour. photo K. Larsen

Janet used Tolkien’s criticisms of Zimmerman’s screenplay as a way of discussing some of Jackson’s issues in trying to make The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings a seamless sequence, including problems of tone, audience, plot structure, and characterization.

After the plenary, it was time to disperse to various sessions. The conference call for papers had elicited so many presentations for this one-day event that the speakers had to be divided into four or five concurrent sessions for every timeslot. I found myself wishing that I could be in two or three places at any one time throughout the day. Luckily, two of the sessions were taped and posted online, so if you were in another room or just stayed at home, you can still listen to Dawn Walls-Thumma talking about “The Loremasters of Feanor: Historical Bias in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Transformative Works.” This link will take you to a page that also includes the text of her talk and the slides that she showed. The other taped session was “History and Technique: Sourcing the Arms, Armor, and Fighting Techniques of Middle-earth” featuring Rebecca Glass and Kat Fanning (if you follow the link, you’ll have to scroll down the page to their video).

Kristine Larsen in the Women in Middle-earth panel. photo C. Vaccaro

Kristine Larsen in the Women in Middle-earth panel. photo C. Vaccaro

Chris Vaccaro NY Tolkien Conference 2015

Chris Vaccaro talking about Beowulf. photo K. Larsen

I attended two regular sessions other than my own. First up was Kristine Larsen‘s paper, “‘While the World Lasted’: End Times in Tolkien’s Works.” Kristine talked about Tolkien’s references to the end of the world, mainly in The History of Middle-earth, The Fall of Arthur, and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, and commented on the prevalence of this theme in his work in the 1930s. Chris Vaccaro‘s presentation on “Affection Between Men in Tolkien’s Beowulf” took a look at the way in which a phrase from Beowulf, “dyrne longath,” has been rendered by many different translators, with interpretations varying widely: do the words refer to deep feelings? secret longings? affection? Chris looked at departure scenes in Beowulf and in Tolkien’s work in the light of this phrase.

Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien

Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien

It was certainly a day packed with ideas and events. I was part of the Women in Middle-earth roundtable discussion along with Janet Brennan Croft, Jessica Burke, Rebecca Glass, and Kristine Larsen. We had a free-ranging discussion about various characters, our first-time reactions as readers and/or movie-goers, and critics’ views of women in Tolkien’s works. One of my points (based on a lecture I had heard recently) echoed the concerns that Janet and her co-editor, Leslie Donovan, express in their recently published anthology, Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien  — that any literary critic who wants to talk about women in Tolkien’s life and work should be informed about previous and current research on the topic. That doesn’t mean that they have to agree with other critics’ opinions, but they shouldn’t just repeat cliches or make statements as if they are the first to look into the question without investigating further. I recommend this book for its combination of older essays and new research for anyone interested in the topic of women.

I was scheduled to give my paper in the last regular session, and thankfully even near the end of a very full day some people showed up and offered interesting comments and questions. My presentation, “‘If you’re a vivid visualizer’: Words and Images in Tolkien’s Sub-creative Process,” extends some of the research that my colleague Jeff MacLeod and I have been doing on Tolkien’s artwork and his visual imagination and style. (We have one essay published, “A Single Leaf: Tolkien’s Visual Art and Fantasy,” and another one on Tolkien’s painterly style that has just been submitted to a journal). My basic question for this presentation was: what can a manuscript sketch such as the Tower of Kirith Ungol (still spelled with a “K” at this point) tell us about Tolkien’s process of composition? How do words and images interact in Tolkien’s drafting of the story?

Tower of Kirith Ungol sketch

Tower of Kirith Ungol sketch

You can find this image in Hammond and Scull’s book, J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, and in The History of Middle-earth, the Sauron Defeated volume. I’ve also been fortunate enough to look at a digital scan of the manuscript at the Marquette University Tolkien archive. In my presentation, I talked about the placement of the sketch on the page, the sequence of pencil and pen drafting, and the effect on the wording of Tolkien’s draft of the story at this point.

Here I am talking about Tolkien's painterly style

Here I am talking about Tolkien’s painterly style (though it looks like I’m demonstrating the height of Durin’s folk)

To set up the ideas for this manuscript examination, I showed examples of Tolkien’s artwork and talked about how he is a “vivid visualizer.” This opening quotation in my presentation title comes from “The Notion Club Papers,” an unfinished story that you can find in Sauron Defeated. In this time-travel story, Tolkien describes characters with different talents: some are vivid visualizers, others have a predilection for words and languages. Sometimes in the story those two abilities working together enhance the characters’ understanding. I talked about how a sketch like the Tower of Kirith Ungol shows this close interplay of words and images in Tolkien’s creative process.

To round off our busy day, we had one closing plenary session. A copy of the 2005 Ring Goes Ever On conference proceedings * was given to Baruch College librarian Chris Tuthill as a gift from the Tolkien Society’s Tolkien to the World program. Then we sat back and listened to the Minstrel Guest of Honour, John diBartolo and The Lonely Mountain Band, who provided some lively music to close out the fellowship of the day. You can sample their music from the links on the conference blog. By the end of it all, Anthony and Jessica’s question about whether they should make this a regular event was met with an enthusiastic yes.

at the New York Tolkien Conference, Baruch College

New York Tolkien Conference, Baruch College

You can read abstracts of all the presentations here. For accounts of different paths through the program from mine, you can read Myla Malinalda’s description of the sessions that she attended on Middle-earth News or Dawn Walls-Thumma’s report for the Signum Eagle newsletter, “The New York Tolkien Conference: Friends and Fellowship.“ And if you’re interested in knowing about future meetings, you should subscribe to the conference blog, follow @herenistarion on Twitter, or join the Facebook group.

Although the conference was only a one-day event, I did extend my stay in New York by a few days. Accompanied by my daughter, we took full advantage of the city: we visited museums (the Frick, the Guggenheim, a few galleries in the Met); we went boating in Central Park and walked on the High Line; we saw a play, Skylight; a musical, An American in Paris; a performance by the Alvin Ailey dance company; and we took advantage of free Shakespeare in the Park tickets to see The Tempest. Add to that a day of Tolkien fellowship — well, that’s not bad for a four-day trip.

*Among the many essays in the 2005 Ring Goes Ever On volumes donated to Baruch College you can find an essay by Kristine Larsen, “‘A Little Earth of His Own’: Tolkien’s Lunar Creation Myths” and one by me: “Male Friendship in The Lord of the Rings: Medievalism, the First World War, and Contemporary Rewritings,” which you can read here.

Please feel free to comment on your own experiences at the conference or to provide links to any other accounts of the event that you know of. Or just tell us your thoughts!