Oxonmoot 2024

A faceless Rider, a Ring that makes its wearer invisible, Hobbits gifted with the art of disappearing, … Hidden things teem in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories. Some elements are even described by what they are not rather than what they are, beginning with Bag-End being “Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole”. What does this mean for illustrators tasked with making them visible? How do they picture the unseen terror of the Nazgûl or the conversation between a very visible Smaug and an invisible Bilbo? In English illustrated editions of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, artists come up with several different techniques to represent what is not present, from a choice of point of view to a play on negative versus positive images. Thus they tackle one of the biggest challenges J.R.R. Tolkien faced his illustrators with.