Lord of the Rings

The J.R.R. Tolkien Calendar 1979 was the final calendar in the series to include new, previously unpublished images made by Tolkien himself – most subsequent Middle-earth-related calendars feature illustrations made by other people, such as acclaimed artists John Howe and Alan Lee. The 1979 calendar was largely composed of paintings and designs that hadn’t been seen in any of the other calendars up to this point, and it included four further illustrations that Tolkien originally made for The Hobbit (although only one of them made it into the published book). This calendar also ventured beyond the Middle-earth legendarium and included examples of emblematic dragons, trees, and flowers, many presented in decorative arrangements that, in some cases, combine elements from widely separate times in Tolkien’s life.

January – Three Dragons

We start off this calendar with three separate dragon images. In the top picture, a warrior is facing off against a long, thin, snake-like dragon that is more reminiscent of those found in Eastern legends rather than classic European mythology. This small watercolour may have been inspired by Beowulf, an epic Anglo-Saxon poem that was written at the beginning of the 11th century. This poem was a work of huge importance to Tolkien. He referred to it as the ‘greatest of the surviving works of ancient English poetic art.’ He studied, discussed, and taught Beowulf for most of his working life, first at Leeds University and later at Oxford. In fact, when Tolkien was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford (a position he held for 20 years), all students taking an English degree had to study Beowulf, and knowledge of the first half of the long poem in Anglo-Saxon (lines 1 – 1,650) was compulsory. However, although this image may certainly have been inspired by a dragon in Beowulf, it is unlikely to have been an illustration of an actual scene in the poem. In Beowulf, the dragon is fought with swords, while shields are described as discs. Tolkien, who obviously knew the poem extremely well, drew his warrior with an elongated shield and spear. Probably, this was just a small visual vignette that Tolkien painted one day, rather than being an illustration for a specific text.

Bottom left, we have another long, thin dragon, this time with its tail coiled around a tree. Its lower body is distinctly serpentine, but its upper body, lying flat on the ground, looks more like a crocodile. Finally, bottom-right, we have a third Chinese-style dragon – or ‘newly-hatched dragonet’, as Tolkien described it when showing it in a 1938 Oxford lecture. The creature’s body is coiled into an elegant, knot-like posture, possibly echoing Celtic design motifs; it has four slender limbs and a pair of very small wings that would presumably be useless for flight. It was painted in September 1927, probably at roughly the same time as the previous two drawings.

Beneath the coiled dragon appear some words from Beowulf (line 2561): hringbogan heorte gefysed, which is rendered in Tolkien’s translation of the poem as ‘Now was the heart of the coiling beast stirred’. This is from the second part of the poem, in which the ageing hero meets his last and most terrible foe, a dragon ravaging his kingdom.

The Tolkien Calendar 1979 is not the first time that these dragons had seen the light of day. The coiled dragon (in its original, painted form, but without its caption) and the warrior contending with the dragon (uncoloured) were both used to illustrate a catalogue for an exhibition of Tolkien’s artwork at the Ashmolean Museum in 1976. The coiled dragon also appeared, as an embossed design in red, silver, and gold, on the cover of the De Luxe edition of The Hobbit, also in 1976. Later, it would grace the cover of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, published in 2014.

Tolkien had a fascination for dragons. He once recalled that the first story he wrote as a child was about a dragon: ‘I first tried to write a story when I was about seven. It was about a dragon. I remember nothing about it except a philological fact. My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not say ‘a green great dragon’, but had to say ‘a great green dragon’. I wondered why, and still do.’ Dragons continued to appear in Tolkien’s poetry and prose, ranging from the evil Glaurung (originally Glórund) in The Children of Húrin to the more cowardly Chrysophylax in Farmer Giles of Ham. Tolkien described the attraction of dragons as a combination of ‘human malice and bestiality’ with ‘malicious wisdom and shrewdness’.

February – The Hall at Bag-End, Residence of B. Baggins Esquire

Ah, it’s been a while since we’ve seen a new illustration from The Hobbit in these calendars. The original black-and-white drawing (seen below) appeared as the final illustration in the first impression of The Hobbit, showing Bilbo Baggins returning to the pleasant existence in which the reader first met him. The coloured version above, meanwhile, was made by H.E. Riddett for the English DeLuxe version of the book in 1976, before appearing in the 1979 calendar.

This is a fascinating piece because not only is it the earliest visual depiction of Bag End, it also shows how Tolkien imagined hobbit-holes to look. Bilbo’s cosy home contains the trappings of a typical, well-to-do English household of the early 20th century – except for the round door and tube-shaped hall, of course. Since Tolkien illustrated this before any professional artist interpreted his world, this is pure authorial canon, straight from the creator’s imagination, and Tolkien fans have made many deductions about hobbit culture and crafts from its contents. It is clear that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film design for Bag End’s interior draws heavily from this original illustration, especially the entry hall layout.

A couple of other things to note: the large door must have been difficult for someone of Bilbo’s height (as he is drawn in this picture at least) to open or close (surely he would have had to stand on a chair to reach the knob), and the bell-pull seems uncomfortably high for a hobbit.

In a 1968 letter, Tolkien admitted that he did not invent the name ‘Bag End’. It was, in fact, the local name for a house where one of his aunts, Jayne Neave, lived, in Worcestershire: an old tumbledown manor house at the end of an untidy lane that led nowhere else.

March – Patterns (I)

While doing newspaper crossword puzzles, J.R.R. Tolkien often drew patterns such as these, selected from among many, which were reproduced for this calendar. They date from the 1960s and were done with coloured ball-point pens. These designs were very frequently of flowers or flower-like forms; others were friezes, or suggested heraldic devices, belts, or tapestries. As such, they might be associated with Númenórean works of art or flowers of Tolkien’s legendarium.

April – The Elvenking’s Gate (I)

This is one of several different sketches that Tolkien made of the Elvenking’s Gate in Mirkwood before he decided on the final piece, as seen in The Hobbit and The Hobbit Calendar 1976. For this untitled, unfinished sketch, Tolkien chose a distant vantage point. A bridge spans a river painted blue, but the mouth of the cave has no visible doors. Uniquely among the various sketches of this location, the scene seems to be set under a moon, which is more accurate to the text – in The Hobbit, the dwarves are brought to the Elvenking after dark, by torchlight.

May – Trees

The two trees above bear, in their originals, the title ‘The Tree of Amalion’. In these two pictures, the placement of the flowers, and most of the flowers themselves, are obviously similar and related, but the tree on the left is thought to have been drawn much later than the tree on the right, which dates from 1927-8. The third tree, to the right, is dated August 1928; it is stylised and carefully balanced, with little variation in leaves, but with a multitude of unrealistic, highly decorative flowers.

Throughout his life, Tolkien drew different versions of a tree which bore a variety of flowers and leaves. He called it the Tree of Amalion, and although that name does not appear in any of the stories of the Middle-earth legendarium, it represented his literary work, his own personal ‘Tree of Tales’. Each leaf and flower represented a story or poem in his mind – far more than he could bring to fruition. Tolkien drew the Tree of Amalion regularly. In its several versions, it is, in Tolkien’s words ‘elaborated and coloured and more suitable for embroidery than printing; and the tree bears besides various shapes of leaves many flowers small and large signifying poems and major legends.’

In 1964, a small anthology of works by J.R.R. Tolkien was published called Tree and Leaf. It originally consisted of a (revised version of) an essay called ‘On Fairy-Stories’ (which discusses the fairy story as a literary form, originally written as one of Tolkien’s lectures) and an allegorical short story called ‘Leaf by Niggles’ (which had previously been published in the Dublin Review in 1945). Tolkien’s publisher asked Tolkien to suggest a suitable cover illustration for the book, perhaps a tree or a leaf from some medieval manuscript, or a tree drawn by Tolkien himself. Tolkien replied that medieval manuscripts were not, in his experience, good on trees, and added: ‘I have among my ‘papers’ more than one version of a mythical ‘tree’, which crops up regularly at those times when I feel driven to pattern-designing.’ This was, of course, the Tree of Amalion. He drew a reduction of this pattern, which his publishers found agreeable, and which appeared on the front cover of the original paperback edition of Tree and Leaf. One version or another of the Tree of Amalion has appeared on most editions of the book that have been published since.

June – The Three Trolls are Turned to Stone

Here we have another previously unpublished drawing that Tolkien made when he was writing The Hobbit. It depicts the three trolls – Tom, Bill, and Bert – bickering amongst themselves and preparing to cook the Dwarves they have captured. In his text, Tolkien largely leaves the trolls to his readers’ imagination, saying only that they are ‘very large’. But in this drawing (coloured by H.E. Riddett for this calendar), Tolkien shows the trolls in full figure. Unlike many later depictions of trolls (both in Tolkien’s world and other fantasy settings), which show trolls as hulking, monstrous beings, Tom, Bill, and Bert here are almost comically caricatured, with stumpy proportions and human-like faces. This reflects The Hobbit‘s lighter, more fairy-tale tone compared to other stories in Tolkien’s legendarium.

The image also shows the trolls’ campsite, some of the Dwarves in sacks, and Bilbo peering out of the foliage. To the right, Gandalf is stepping out from behind a tree and raising his staff. In the background, dawn is breaking, and the trolls are turning to stone, about to be petrified forever.

This picture was never included alongside the other illustrations produced for The Hobbit. It may be that Tolkien was unhappy with the figures in this drawing, or perhaps he realised that, since he had applied an ink wash to the trolls and to Gandalf’s cloak, the picture would not have reproduced well by line-block. In any case, he drew a new picture of the trolls (simply called The Trolls), of a slightly earlier scene, which he selected for publication, and which was shown in The Hobbit Calendar 1976.

July – Patterns (II)

These intricate designs were created by Tolkien in the 1960s and reveal his skill as a decorative artist with a love of pattern, symmetry, and historic design. They belong to the author’s body of ornamental artwork – designs that echo the visual cultures of Middle-earth while also drawing from real-world artistic traditions. In particular, the colour palette – predominantly red, green, black, and touches of gold – reminds me of medieval manuscripts.

August – Bilbo comes to the Hut of the Raft-elves (I)

This painting is an earlier or alternate version of the watercolour illustration depicting Bilbo’s arrival on a floating barrel at the home of the Raft-elves. In this version, he arrives by the light of the full moon, but in the watercolour published with The Hobbit (and as seen in the 1973 calendar), the sun has already risen. The book clearly states that the barrels reached the Raft-elf village while it was still dark, so this unpublished image is actually more accurate to the text.

September – Floral Designs

Like the two ‘Patterns’ already seen in this calendar, the images in Floral Designs were created late in Tolkien’s life. They reveal his deep fascination with botanical forms. The central motif is a tall, elegant, almost abstract tree-like form, flanked by smaller, highly ornamental plant designs that vary in character: some are tightly symmetrical and architectural, while others are loose, curling, and organic.

The name pilinehtar belongs with the plant in the centre, which is one of many similar designs in black ink of slender rush-like or grass-like plants Tolkien made, several of them bearing Elvish names.

October – Smaug Flies Around the Mountain

This is the southern aspect of the Lonely Mountain, where the River Running flows out of the Front Gate and loops around the ruins of the town of Dale. Smaug can be seen flying overhead, keeping a watchful eye on his domain. Although this seems to be a finished illustration, it was never offered to Allen & Unwin for publication. Perhaps it was made too late, or maybe it’s because it contains varied greys and dense blacks not well suited to line-blocks. In any case, a different drawing of the front gate was used instead, as we’ve already seen in the 1976 calendar.

November – Flowering Tree with Friezes

November’s image is a composite, made up of illustrations that Tolkien created at very different times. The bird in the flowering tree in the centre and the friezes above and below date from the late 1920s. The two flowers to the left and right, however, date from the 1960s.

December – Polar Bear had fallen from top to bottom onto his nose

Four children were born to J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife from 1917 to 1929: John, Michael, Christopher, and Priscilla. As a devoted father, Tolkien was inspired to invent stories for his sons and daughter, which were often humorous or light-hearted, though they were sometimes influenced by (if not directly connected to) his growing mythology. In December 1920, he began to write a series of letters as if from Father Christmas. These letters brought news from the North Pole of Father Christmas’s friends and helpers, and of difficulties and mishaps that had occurred during the year (frequently caused by his chief ‘helper’, the North Polar Bear). The letters are written in a rather shaky, spidery hand to convey Father Christmas’s great age – he was over 1,000 years old – and also to disguise Tolkien’s own handwriting. They are sometimes interspersed with comments from the helpers, each one written in a distinctive hand, and they were all accompanied by drawings of the events. They arrived in envelopes with North Pole postage stamps; they were sometimes found on the hearth or were even delivered by the postman.

This particular illustration and its accompanying letter arrived at the Tolkien house at Christmas 1928. The painting shows the interior of Cliff House at the North Pole, with the North Polar Bear having fallen down the stairs, spilling Christmas decorations and presents everywhere. It was first published in The Father Christmas Letters in 1976, along with all the other illustrations that Tolkien made during these years for his children.

And there we have it. We’ve now looked at all of the official J.R.R. Tolkien calendars that feature new Tolkien artwork. Going forward, I may look at some of Tolkien’s other illustrations and maps, which we haven’t yet seen, or I may start to look at the work of my favourite Tolkien illustrator, the superb Alan Lee.