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Old 12-19-2010, 07:46 AM   #1
Pitchwife
Wight of the Old Forest
 
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Location: Unattended on the railway station, in the litter at the dancehall
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Illustrations of Tolkien before his time

This thread takes its inspiration from a remarkable little incident Tolkien reported in one of his letters:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Letter 328
A few years ago I was visited in Oxford by a man whose name I have forgotten (though I believe he was well-known). He had been much struck by the curious way in which many old pictures seemed to him to have been designed to illustrate The Lord of the Rings long before its time. He brought one or two reproductions. I think he wanted at first simply to discover whether my imagination had fed on pictures, as it clearly had by certain kinds of literature and languages. When it became obvious that, unless I was a liar, I had never seen the pictures before and was not well acquainted with pictorial Art, he fell silent. I became aware that he was looking fixedly at me. Suddenly he said: 'Of course you don't suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?'
(bolding mine)

Nowadays, of course, Tolkien has been illustrated (with varying success) by hundreds of artists, but I wonder which "old pictures" the unnamed visitor could have been thinking of. We'll never know, of course, but I can think of some pre-Tolkien paintings which I somehow associate with LotR myself, and I suppose you may have one or the other in your minds as well.

So, my question is: Are there any works of art, ancient or modern, famous or obscure, which seem to you to illustrate scenes from Tolkien's works without being meant to, or which otherwise strike you as 'Tolkienish' in style, spirit or subject matter?

This is not about whether the Prof was in fact inspired by those works, so you can be as subjective as you like. To give two examples of the kind of thing I'm looking for:

The Battle of Alexander at Issus
by Albrecht Altdorfer, aka The Battle of the Pelennor Fields:



The city/fortress in the background doesn't look too much like Minas Tirith, and the lie of the land doesn't quite fit either, but here are the Rohirrim charging at the Haradrim forces, and the panoramic view gives the battle a feel of cosmic relevance, like the fate of all Middle-earth is at stake.

The Surrender of Breda by Diego Velazquez, aka The Steward and the King:



Never mind the baroque costumes - what I see here is Faramir, last Steward of Gondor, surrendering his office, and Aragorn replying: "That office is not ended, and it shall by thine and thy heirs' as long as my line shall last." Just imagine Gandalf and our four Hobbits among the bystanders.

(For some hilarious examples with a humorous twist, see this site, but I'm actually quite serious about this!)
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