In 1968, not long before Tolkien moved from Oxford, John Wyatt photographed him in Merton College garden holding a copy of *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book. In early 1972, soon after Tolkien’s return to Oxford, Athar Chaudry photographed him in the same garden for an article in the local newspaper.
An Application for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford by J.R.R. Tolkien, Professor of the English Language in the University of Leeds, June 25, 1925. Pamphlet, twelve pages privately printed for Tolkien, in which he conveys his credentials to the electors for the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair, accompanied by a list of his publications and testimonials by colleagues and university officials: *Lascelles Abercrombie, *Henry Bradley, *L.R. Farnell, *George S. Gordon, Allen Mawer, M.E. Sadler, and *Joseph Wright. Most of Tolkien’s statement was printed in Letters, pp. 12–13.
Art. Tolkien learned to draw and paint at an early age. Although never more than an amateur artist, with a limited ability to draw the human figure, nevertheless he had a talent for rendering trees, flowers, and mountains; and though he sometimes complained that he could not draw, some of the illustrations he made for his own stories rival in quality the work of professionals.
His earliest art was inspired by places he visited, such as *Berkshire, *Cornwall, and *Lyme Regis, and reflects a concern for accuracy: some of the views and buildings he depicted can still be found today, almost exactly as he drew them. Between about December 1911 and summer 1913, however, while he was a student at the University of *Oxford, he made at least twenty ‘visionary’ pictures which he later collected into an envelope labelled Earliest Ishnesses. Although the derived word ishness appears as the final element in only two of the titles of his early drawings (Undertenishness and Grownupishness, see Artist and Illustrator, figs. 34–35), Tolkien applied it to all of his visual depictions of things symbolic and abstract, and later to any picture he drew from his imagination rather than from life. In January 1914 he wrote the title The Book of Ishness on the cover of a sketchbook, in which he continued his series of imaginative drawings. These now included The Land of Pohja (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 41), related to the *Kalevala, and pictures such as Water, Wind and Sand, Tanaqui, and The Shores of Faery (Artist and Illustrator, figs. 42–44), which are related to Tolkien’s *‘Silmarillion’ mythology. From this point painting and drawing became an additional outlet for his burgeoning imagination. Some aspects of his mythology emerged in writing and were then depicted in pencil, ink, and paints; but others began in pictorial form, and only later were put into words.
With the birth of his children Tolkien also used his skills as an artist to complement the stories he invented for the entertainment of his sons and daughter. For many years he produced annual letters to his children, written, decorated, and illustrated as by Father Christmas and accompanied by facsimile stamps and envelopes from the ‘North Pole’ (*The ‘Father Christmas’ letters). He also illustrated some of his longer stories, such as *Roverandom, *The Hobbit, and the picture book *Mr. Bliss. When The Hobbit was accepted for publication Tolkien convinced George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) that it should contain pictures, some based on those already in its ‘home manuscript’, others made by Tolkien especially for the book, as well as maps, among which Thror’s Map is a ‘facsimile’ of an ‘antique’ map which figures in the story. He also designed the original binding for The Hobbit, and a dust-jacket – a stylized landscape of mountains and trees – which is still used on some editions of the book with only minor revisions.
The first edition of The Hobbit contained only black and white art; but when colour illustrations were wanted for the American edition, Tolkien produced five paintings in July and August 1937: The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the Water, Rivendell, Bilbo Woke Up with the Early Sun in His Eyes, Bilbo Comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves, and Conversation with Smaug (Artist and Illustrator, figs. 98, 108, 113, 124, 133; Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, figs. 11, 23, 39, 64, 71). These are some of his finest work, produced while Tolkien was ‘divided between knowledge of my own inability [to draw] and fear of what American artists (doubtless of admirable skill) might produce’, in particular ‘the *Disney studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing)’ (letter to C.A. Furth, 13 May 1937, Letters, p. 17). See further, *The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Despite the success of his Hobbit art, Tolkien referred to it almost always with self-effacement: it was ‘indifferent’, ‘defective’, ‘not very good’. He lacked the time, while pressed with many academic and personal responsibilities, to practise and develop his painting and drawing to the point at which he might feel comfortable exposing it to public view. For his next book, *Farmer Giles of Ham, he turned to a professional artist, *Pauline Baynes, whose work he found a perfect complement to his text. After this Baynes became his illustrator of choice. He hoped that she might illustrate *The Lord of the Rings, but its limited budget made little allowance for art. Tolkien however, while writing The Lord of the Rings, made numerous rough sketches and several finished coloured pencil drawings to help him visualize topography and architecture. His painstakingly rendered picture of the Doors of Durin (Book II, Chapter 4) was redrawn by a blockmaker’s artist before publication; his even more elaborate ‘facsimile’ pages of the Dwarves’ Book of Mazarbul, with genuine stab holes and burn marks, proved too costly to reproduce; and the distinctive dust-jacket designs he made for The Lord of the Rings were set aside in favour of a uniform design for all three volumes, each with Tolkien’s Eye of Sauron–Ring inscription motif. See further, *The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Although Tolkien did not study art as an academic subject, he was aware of styles or movements such as Symbolism and Art nouveau, and had a keen interest in decoration and handicraft. There are few references to the ‘fine’ arts of painting and sculpture in his writings (*Leaf by Niggle notably excepted, in which the title character is a painter), but many to decorative art such as carving, weaving, jewellery, and metalwork (see especially *Smith of Wootton Major), as well as *calligraphy and artistic lettering, in which Tolkien himself was skilled. Throughout his life he was drawn to decoration: most of his later art consists of brightly coloured patterns and devices, drawn purely for enjoyment; and among his papers are several versions of a decorated tree, the ‘Tree of Amalion’, bearing various shapes of leaves and many flowers. These are visual representations of ‘the countless foliage of the Tree of Tales, with which the Forest of Days is carpeted’, as Tolkien wrote in his essay *On Fairy-Stories (*Tree and Leaf, p. 52), and they are related also to Niggle’s painting of a tree in Leaf by Niggle which had ‘all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different. … It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots’ (Tree and Leaf, pp. 75–6).
*J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (1995) reproduces the widest range of Tolkien’s art, but only half of the images are in colour; with one exception, the colour is good. Artist and Illustrator mostly, but not entirely, supersedes *Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien (1979; 2nd edn. 1992), a collection of pictures which had appeared in a series of Tolkien calendars, with foreword and notes by Christopher Tolkien. The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (2011) and The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (2015) each reproduces in colour all relevant art known to the authors at the time of writing, including calligraphy and maps.
Tolkien’s art has been variously exhibited; see: Catalogue of an Exhibition of Drawings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1976, for an exhibition held successively at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the National Book League,