J. R. R. Tolkien's artwork

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Tolkien's illustration of the Doors of Durin for The Fellowship of the Ring, with Sindarin inscription in Tengwar script, both being his inventions. Despite his best efforts, this was the only drawing, other than maps and calligraphy, in the first edition of The Lord of the Rings. In early editions it was printed in black on white rather than, as here and as Tolkien wished, in white on black. Doors of Durin.jpg
Tolkien's illustration of the Doors of Durin for The Fellowship of the Ring , with Sindarin inscription in Tengwar script, both being his inventions. Despite his best efforts, this was the only drawing, other than maps and calligraphy, in the first edition of The Lord of the Rings. In early editions it was printed in black on white rather than, as here and as Tolkien wished, in white on black.

Tolkien's artwork was a key element of his creativity from the time when he began to write fiction. The philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien prepared a wide variety of materials to support his fiction, including illustrations for his Middle-earth fantasy books, facsimile artefacts, more or less "picturesque" maps, calligraphy, and sketches and paintings from life. Some of his artworks combined several of these elements.

Contents

In his lifetime, some of his artworks were included in his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings ; others were used on the covers of different editions of these books. Posthumously, collections of his artworks have been published, and academics have begun to evaluate him as an artist as well as an author.

Early work: sketches

Ink drawing of "Quallington Carpenter", Eastbury, Berkshire, 1912 Quallington Carpenter, Eastbury, Berkshire by Tolkien 1912.jpg
Ink drawing of "Quallington Carpenter", Eastbury, Berkshire, 1912

Early in his life, Tolkien, taught by his mother, made many sketches and paintings from life. He drew with skill and depicted landscapes, buildings, trees, and flowers realistically. The one thing he admitted he could not draw was the human figure, where his attempts have been described as "cartoonish", as if "a different hand" was involved. [1] [2] The scholars Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull describe his 1912 ink drawing of a cottage in Berkshire, "Quallington Carpenter", as "the most impressive" of these early works, its "sagging walls" and thatched roof "elaborately textured and shaded". [2]

Illustrations for his books

Tolkien's illustrations for his books consisted of drawings, paintings, artefacts, more or less "picturesque" maps, and calligraphy. [1]

The Hobbit

Watercolour painting The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the-Water used as the frontispiece of the first American edition of The Hobbit, 1938 The Hill - Hobbiton-across-the-Water.jpg
Watercolour painting The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the-Water used as the frontispiece of the first American edition of The Hobbit , 1938

Tolkien's illustrations contributed to the effectiveness of his writings, though much of his oeuvre remained unpublished in his lifetime. However, the first British edition of The Hobbit in 1937 was published with ten of his black-and-white drawings. [1] In addition, it had as its frontispiece Tolkien's drawing The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the-Water. It depicts Bilbo Baggins's home village of Hobbiton in the Shire. The old mill, based on the mill at Sarehole, and The Water are in the foreground, an idealised English countryside in the middle distance, and The Hill and Bilbo's home Bag End (tunnelled into The Hill) in the background. [3] The American edition replaced the frontispiece with Tolkien's full-colour watercolour painting of the same scene; this was then used in later impressions in England also. [T 2] The American edition had in addition four of his watercolour paintings. [1]

The Lord of the Rings

The Book of Mazarbul

The first page from The Book of Mazarbul, in the form of a facsimile artefact created by Tolkien to support the story and bring readers into his fantasy. The publishers declined to include a reproduction of the artefact in the first edition of The Lord of the Rings. The Book of Mazarbul, first page.jpg
The first page from The Book of Mazarbul, in the form of a facsimile artefact created by Tolkien to support the story and bring readers into his fantasy. The publishers declined to include a reproduction of the artefact in the first edition of The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien worked on making realistic artefacts to accompany his writing; he spent enormous effort on a facsimile Book of Mazarbul to resemble the burnt, torn volume abandoned at the tomb of the Dwarf-leader Balin in the subterranean realm of Moria; in the story, the wizard Gandalf finds the book and struggles to read out a substantial amount of the damaged text. [1] [T 4] Tolkien carefully stained the artefact's materials, actually burning in the burn-marks and tearing the paper to make it as authentic as possible. [1] He anxiously wrote to his publisher Rayner Unwin asking about the reproduction of the artefact. [T 5] The company however chose not to include an image of the book in the first edition, prompting Tolkien to remark that without it the text at the start of "The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm" was "rather absurd". [T 3] Tolkien realized late in his life that he had made a mistake in the artefact: the text was written in runes, as if somehow the Book of Mazarbul had surprisingly survived thousands of years from the Third Age, but the text itself was English, not the Common Speech that the book's scribe would have used. [4]

The Doors of Durin

The Lord of the Rings , despite Tolkien's best efforts, appeared with only one illustration other than its maps and calligraphy. This was The Doors of Durin, in the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring , in 1954. [1] [T 6]

The Doors of Durin were the magical stone gates forming the western entrance to Moria; they were invisible when shut, but could be made visible by moonlight, whereupon their lettering and design, worked in mithril , could be seen. That lettering in fact contained a welcome and the password, to those who could read the Feänorian script (Tengwar) and understand the Elvish language (Sindarin). Tolkien gave the design elegantly curled trees, mirroring the curls of the script. [1] The design's clean lines cost Tolkien much effort; he made numerous sketches, each one a simplification of the last, to attain the apparent simplicity of the final design. [1] [5]

A Numenorean tile, such as might have been saved from the wreck of Numenor by Elendil, and taken in his ships to Middle-earth. Numenorean Tile.jpg
A Numenorean tile, such as might have been saved from the wreck of Númenor by Elendil, and taken in his ships to Middle-earth.

He wrote to Unwin that while he was drawing it in black ink "it should of course properly appear in white line on a black background, since it represents a silver line in the darkness. How does that appeal to the Production Department?" [T 1]

The image was accompanied by a calligraphic caption in English, made to resemble "both the insular characters of Old English manuscript and the very Feänorian characters [that] it translates". [1]

The Silmarillion

Tolkien did not live to see The Silmarillion published, but he prepared images for it, including paintings of several symmetrical tile-like heraldic emblems for its kings and houses, and an actual Númenórean tile such as would have been rescued from the wreck of the civilisation of Númenor in Elendil's ships, and brought to Middle-earth. [T 7] One of his emblems, for Lúthien Tinúviel, was used on the front cover of The Silmarillion, and another five (for Fingolfin, Eärendil, Idril Celebrindal, Elwë, and Fëanor) were used on the back cover. [T 8]

Maps

Fantasy, cartography, calligraphy: Detail from Tolkien's map of Wilderland in The Hobbit, supposedly a fair copy made by the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, an illusion reinforced by Tolkien's own "charming hand lettering". Wilderland red-black map (detail).jpg
Fantasy, cartography, calligraphy: Detail from Tolkien's map of Wilderland in The Hobbit , supposedly a fair copy made by the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, an illusion reinforced by Tolkien's own "charming hand lettering".

Tolkien's maps, like his illustrations, helped his readers to enter his subcreated world of Middle-earth. The Hobbit had two maps; The Lord of the Rings had three, redrawn by his son Christopher Tolkien; The Silmarillion had two. These served multiple purposes, first as guides to the author, helping to ensure consistency in the narrative, and later to the reader through the often complex routes taken by his characters. [1] [6]

Calligraphy

Tolkien's profession of philology made him familiar with medieval illuminated manuscripts; he imitated their style in his own calligraphy, an art which his mother had taught him. He applied this skill in his development of Middle-earth, creating alphabets such as Tengwar for his invented languages, especially Elvish. [1]

Tolkien applied his skill in calligraphy to write the One Ring's iconic inscription, in the Black Speech of Mordor, using Tengwar. The calligraphic inscription and a translation provided by Gandalf appear in The Fellowship of the Ring . [T 9]

Multiple dimensions of artistry: Tolkien used his skill in calligraphy to write the One Ring's iconic inscription, in the Black Speech of Mordor, using the Elvish Tengwar script, both of which he invented. One Ring inscription.svg
Multiple dimensions of artistry: Tolkien used his skill in calligraphy to write the One Ring's iconic inscription, in the Black Speech of Mordor, using the Elvish Tengwar script, both of which he invented.

Publication

In 1979, Tolkien's son Christopher began the process of bringing his father's artwork to the world's attention, beyond the images already published at that time on calendars, by editing Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien. [T 10] It had 48 plates, some in colour. [7]

Two major books have addressed Tolkien's artwork: Hammond and Scull's 1995 collection of his paintings, J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator ; [8] and Catherine McIlwaine's 2018 book accompanying the exhibition she curated at the Bodleian Library, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth . [9] Hammond and Scull have also published two further collections; The Art of The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (2011) [10] and The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (2015). [11]

Analysis

Influences on Tolkien's artwork identified by scholars include Japonisme, Art Nouveau, Viking design, and William Morris. Japonisme is seen in stylised features like Tolkien's mountains, waves, and dragons. The influence of Morris's book Some Hints on Pattern Designing, which Tolkien owned, appears in his designs for tiles and heraldic devices for The Silmarillion . [12]

John R. Holmes, in the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , states that given the struggle faced by literary critics to establish Tolkien's position as a writer, in the face of an enduringly hostile literary establishment, "the problem of evaluating Tolkien's status as a visual artist is even more daunting". [1] The Tolkien scholar Patchen Mortimer similarly comments on the "contentious debate" about him, noting that his many readers find his books and "the attendant languages, histories, maps, artwork, and apocrypha" [13] a huge accomplishment, while his critics "dismiss his work as childish, irrelevant, and worse". [13] Mortimer observes that admirers and critics treat his work as "escapist and romantic", [13] nothing to do with the 20th century. Mortimer calls this "an appalling oversight", writing that "Tolkien's project was as grand and avant-garde as those of Wagner or the Futurists, and his works are as suffused with the spirit of the age as any by Eliot, Joyce, or Hemingway". [13]

The Tolkien scholars Jeffrey J. MacLeod and Anna Smol write that as an artist, Tolkien "straddled the amateur and professional fields", something he did also in his fiction and his scholarly studies. They note that he always had pencils, paper, coloured inks, chalks, and paintboxes to hand, and that his metaphors of creativity, as in his essay On Fairy-Stories , constantly refer to colour, or as in his poem Mythopoeia , to the theme of light, [14] something that the scholar of mythology and medieval literature Verlyn Flieger calls central to the whole mythology, seen throughout The Silmarillion. [15] MacLeod and Smol write that images and text "merge" in his creative work in four ways: in drafting his tales; in shaping his descriptions of landscapes; in his explorations of the visual appearance of text, as in his invented alphabets, his calligraphy, and his "JRRT" monogram; and in his view of the relationship between illustration and fantasy. In short, they conclude, "Tolkien's art and his visual imagination should be considered an essential part of his writing and thinking." [12]

Artists inspired by Tolkien's writing

Many artists and illustrators have created drawings, paintings, and book illustrations of Tolkien's Middle-earth. Tolkien was critical of some of the early attempts, [T 11] but was happy to collaborate with the illustrator Pauline Baynes who prepared the iconic map of Middle-earth. [16] Among the many artists who have worked on Middle-earth projects are John Howe, Alan Lee, and Ted Nasmith; as well as illustrating books, Howe and Lee worked as conceptual artists for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. [17]

Related Research Articles

The Rings of Power are magical artefacts in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, most prominently in his high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. The One Ring first appeared as a plot device, a magic ring in Tolkien's children's fantasy novel, The Hobbit; Tolkien later gave it a backstory and much greater power. He added nineteen other Great Rings, also conferring powers such as invisibility, that it could control, including the Three Rings of the Elves, Seven Rings for the Dwarves, and Nine for Men. He stated that there were in addition many lesser rings with minor powers. A key story element in The Lord of the Rings is the addictive power of the One Ring, made secretly by the Dark Lord Sauron; the Nine Rings enslave their bearers as the Nazgûl (Ringwraiths), Sauron's most deadly servants.

<i>Bilbos Last Song</i> 1973 poem by J.R.R. Tolkien

Bilbo's Last Song is a poem by J. R. R. Tolkien, written as a pendant to his fantasy The Lord of the Rings. It was first published in a Dutch translation in 1973, subsequently appearing in English on posters in 1974 and as a picture-book in 1990. It was illustrated by Pauline Baynes, and set to music by Donald Swann and Stephen Oliver. The poem's copyright was owned by Tolkien's secretary, to whom he gave it in gratitude for her work for him.

<i>J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator</i> Book by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull

J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator is a collection of paintings and drawings by J. R. R. Tolkien for his stories, published posthumously in 1995. The book was edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. It won the 1996 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies. The nature and importance of Tolkien's artwork is discussed.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the real-world history and notable fictional elements of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy universe. It covers materials created by Tolkien; the works on his unpublished manuscripts, by his son Christopher Tolkien; and films, games and other media created by other people.

The works of J. R. R. Tolkien have generated a body of research covering many aspects of his fantasy writings. These encompass The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, along with his legendarium that remained unpublished until after his death, and his constructed languages, especially the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin. Scholars from different disciplines have examined the linguistic and literary origins of Middle-earth, and have explored many aspects of his writings from Christianity to feminism and race.

"Errantry" is a three-page poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, first published in The Oxford Magazine in 1933. It was included in revised and extended form in Tolkien's 1962 collection of short poems, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Donald Swann set the poem to music in his 1967 song cycle, The Road Goes Ever On.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Middle-earth</span> Continent in Tolkiens legendarium

Middle-earth is the setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the Miðgarðr of Norse mythology and Middangeard in Old English works, including Beowulf. Middle-earth is the human-inhabited world, that is, the central continent of the Earth, in Tolkien's imagined mythological past. Tolkien's most widely read works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, are set entirely in Middle-earth. "Middle-earth" has also become a short-hand term for Tolkien's legendarium, his large body of fantasy writings, and for the entirety of his fictional world.

In the fictional world of J. R. R. Tolkien, Moria, also named Khazad-dûm, is an ancient subterranean complex in Middle-earth, comprising a vast labyrinthine network of tunnels, chambers, mines and halls under the Misty Mountains, with doors on both the western and the eastern sides of the mountain range. Moria is introduced in Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, and is a major scene of action in The Lord of the Rings.

<i>The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien</i> Non-fiction book

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien is a selection of the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien's letters. It was published in 1981, edited by Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter, who was assisted by Christopher Tolkien. The selection, from a large mass of materials, contains 354 letters. These were written between October 1914, when Tolkien was an undergraduate at Oxford, and 29 August 1973, four days before his death. The letters are of interest both for what they show of Tolkien's life and for his interpretations of his Middle-earth writings.

<i>The Silmarillion</i> Collection of J. R. R. Tolkiens mythopoeic works

The Silmarillion is a collection of myths and stories in varying styles by the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien. It was edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, assisted by Guy Gavriel Kay, who became a fantasy author. It tells of Eä, a fictional universe that includes the Blessed Realm of Valinor, the ill-fated region of Beleriand, the island of Númenor, and the continent of Middle-earth, where Tolkien's most popular works—The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—are set. After the success of The Hobbit, Tolkien's publisher, Stanley Unwin, requested a sequel, and Tolkien offered a draft of the writings that would later become The Silmarillion. Unwin rejected this proposal, calling the draft obscure and "too Celtic", so Tolkien began working on a new story that eventually became The Lord of the Rings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A Map of Middle-earth</span> Fictional map

"A Map of Middle-earth" is the name of two colour posters by different artists, Barbara Remington and Pauline Baynes. They depict the north-western region of the fictional continent of Middle-earth. They were published in 1965 and 1970 by the American and British publishers of J. R. R. Tolkien's book The Lord of the Rings. The poster map by Pauline Baynes has been described as "iconic".

<i>Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth</i> Book by Catherine Mcilwaine

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth is a 2018 art book exploring images of the artwork, illustrations, maps, letters and manuscripts of J. R. R. Tolkien. The book was written by Catherine McIlwaine, Tolkien archivist at the Bodleian Library. It was timed to coincide with an exhibition of the same name, also curated by McIlwaine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plants in Middle-earth</span> Mentions of plants in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien

The plants in Middle-earth, the fictional world devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, are a mixture of real plant species with fictional ones. Middle-earth was intended to represent the real world in an imagined past, and in many respects its natural history is realistic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trees in Middle-earth</span> Trees and forests in the fictional works of J. R. R. Tolkien

Trees play multiple roles in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth, some such as Old Man Willow indeed serving as characters in the plot. Both for Tolkien personally, and in his Middle-earth writings, caring about trees really mattered. Indeed, the Tolkien scholar Matthew Dickerson wrote "It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of trees in the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien's maps</span> Use of cartography in J. R. R. Tolkiens world-building

J. R. R. Tolkien's maps, depicting his fictional Middle-earth and other places in his legendarium, helped him with plot development, guided the reader through his often complex stories, and contributed to the impression of depth and worldbuilding in his writings.

Tolkien's Middle-earth family trees contribute to the impression of depth and realism in the stories set in his fantasy world by showing that each character is rooted in history with a rich network of relationships. J. R. R. Tolkien included multiple family trees in both The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion; they are variously for Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Men.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heraldry of Middle-earth</span> Heraldry in Tolkiens Middle-earth

J. R. R. Tolkien invented heraldic devices for many of the characters and nations of Middle-earth. His descriptions were in simple English rather than in specific blazon. The emblems correspond in nature to their bearers, and their diversity contributes to the richly-detailed realism of his writings.

In Tolkien's legendarium, ancestry provides a guide to character. The apparently genteel Hobbits of the Baggins family turn out to be worthy protagonists of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins is seen from his family tree to be both a Baggins and an adventurous Took. Similarly, Frodo Baggins has some relatively outlandish Brandybuck blood. Among the Elves of Middle-earth, as described in The Silmarillion, the highest are the peaceful Vanyar, whose ancestors conformed most closely to the divine will, migrating to Aman and seeing the light of the Two Trees of Valinor; the lowest are the mutable Teleri; and in between are the conflicted Noldor. Scholars have analysed the impact of ancestry on Elves such as the creative but headstrong Fëanor, who makes the Silmarils. Among Men, Aragorn, hero of The Lord of the Rings, is shown by his descent from Kings, Elves, and an immortal Maia to be of royal blood, destined to be the true King who will restore his people. Scholars have commented that in this way, Tolkien was presenting a view of character from Norse mythology, and an Anglo-Saxon view of kingship, though others have called his implied views racist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien and antiquarianism</span> J. R. R. Tolkiens literary approach

J. R. R. Tolkien included many elements in his Middle-earth writings, especially The Lord of the Rings, other than narrative text. These include artwork, calligraphy, chronologies, family trees, heraldry, languages, maps, poetry, proverbs, scripts, glossaries, prologues, and annotations. Scholars have stated that the use of these elements places Tolkien in the tradition of English antiquarianism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Illustrating Tolkien</span> Depicting Tolkiens fictional world

Since the publication of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit in 1937, artists including Tolkien himself have sought to capture aspects of Middle-earth fantasy novels in paintings and drawings. He was followed in his lifetime by artists whose work he liked, such as Pauline Baynes, Mary Fairburn, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, and Ted Nasmith, and by some whose work he rejected, such as Horus Engels for the German edition of The Hobbit. Tolkien had strong views on illustration of fantasy, especially in the case of his own works. His recorded opinions range from his rejection of the use of images in his 1936 essay On Fairy-Stories, to agreeing the case for decorative images for certain purposes, and his actual creation of images to accompany the text in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Commentators including Ruth Lacon and Pieter Collier have described his views on illustration as contradictory, and his requirements as being as fastidious as his editing of his novels.

References

Primary

  1. 1 2 Carpenter 2023 , #137 to Rayner Unwin , 11 April 1953
  2. 1 2 Tolkien 1979 , Figure 1
  3. 1 2 Carpenter 2023 , #141 to Allen & Unwin, 9 October 1953
  4. ↑ Tolkien 1954a , book 2, ch. 5 "The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm"
  5. ↑ Carpenter 2023 , #139 to Rayner Unwin , 8 August 1953
  6. ↑ Tolkien 1954a , book 2, ch. 4 "A Journey in the Dark"
  7. 1 2 Tolkien 1979 , Figure 46
  8. ↑ Tolkien 1977 , Front and back cover
  9. 1 2 Tolkien 1954a , book 1, ch. 2 " The Shadow of the Past "
  10. ↑ Tolkien 1979 , Foreword
  11. ↑ Carpenter 2023 , #107 to Sir Stanley Unwin , 7 December 1946.

Secondary

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Holmes 2013, pp. 27–32.
  2. 1 2 3 McIlwaine 2018, pp. 70–71.
  3. ↑ "The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the Water". Museoteca. Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  4. ↑ Fimi 2010, pp. 192–194.
  5. ↑ Huttar 1975, pp. 121–122.
  6. 1 2 Campbell 2013, pp. 405–408.
  7. ↑ Pictures / by J.R.R. Tolkien; foreword and notes by Christopher Tolkien. WorldCat. OCLC   937613591 . Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  8. ↑ Hammond & Scull 1995.
  9. ↑ McIlwaine 2018.
  10. ↑ Hammond & Scull 2011.
  11. ↑ Hammond & Scull 2015.
  12. 1 2 MacLeod & Smol 2017, pp. 115–131.
  13. 1 2 3 4 Mortimer 2005, pp. 113–129.
  14. ↑ MacLeod & Smol 2008, article 10.
  15. ↑ Flieger 1983, pp. 6–61, 89–90 and passim.
  16. ↑ McIlwaine 2018, p. 384.
  17. ↑ "76th Academy Awards". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . Archived from the original on 19 February 2006. Retrieved 29 May 2006.

Sources

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