Tolkien, the Artist

[Aiwendil]

Great idea for a thread, Estelyn! I got this book for Christmas last year and thoroughly enjoyed it - far more than I expected.

Art nouveau was an important ingredient in his Cauldron, though "his art cannot be neatly classified. He tried on different styles, but most did not suit him and appear in his work only once or twice." (P. 11)

I find Tolkien's stylistic variety interesting. He seems to me not to have shown the same interest in the antique in his visual artwork as in his writing - I found many of the images surprisingly modern.

Among his earlier (chapter 1) works, some strike me as rather impressionistic - for instance, no. 17 ("Foxglove Year") and no. 18 ("The Cottage, Barnt Green"). It's interesting to compare these with no. 29, "Summer in Kerry", another landscape that could be described as impressionistic, but one from much later. The earlier ones are far more complex and detailed; the later one reduces the palette to little more than a single hue and takes away almost all detail. If I may dare to make a comparison, "Summer in Kerry" rather reminds me of Monet's "Impression Sunrise".