Pictures of JRRT and JRRT: Artist and Illustrator

I have just had a quick look at my copy of Pictures and Artist and Illustrator. I think both books are excellent, Pictures because it has some bigger pictures than Artist and Illustrator, but Artist and Illustrator is a much more comprehensive book than Pictures.

Did this book include everything unique by JRRT (be it pieces of art or writings) that were already contained in Pictures of J.R.R. Tolkien?

No is the answer, as there are some illustrations in Pictures that are not in Artist and Illustrator but all the main ones are and I'm sure that Wayne and Christina can give you a much more detailed answer to your questions.

While we're waiting for Christina and Wayne, I wonder if I might venture a response? - Pictures is a collection of works which appeared in calendars published between 1973 and 1979, with a gap in 1975. There are one or two other pieces, which did not feature in the calendars.

There are no writings of Tolkien's; the text is limited to a foreword by Christopher, and comments by him on each picture. It's a nice book, but there are problems; the main one being that the colours are not as in the original paintings. Take for instance Conversation with Smaug. The colours are washed out; Smuag's front claw is completely wrong!

I know, those two are a bit slow!

In their absence I'll quote some contemporary comments from Mr Hammond that appeared on rec.arts.books.tolkien (Google Group).

Content & quality are the main points...

Mon, Nov 13 1995 12:00 am

[Artist & Illustrator & Pictures]

If by this you mean that there is some art in Pictures that's not in
J.R.R. Tolkien, Artist & Illustrator, that's correct. We could have
no more than 200 illustrations in the latter book, so opted to include
most of those in Pictures, those most important, but not to
include others, so that we could publish more art not previously
published. We refer to art in Pictures that's not in our book.
And yes, smaller format, but for good reason. Or rather, there was
a reason why Pictures was in such a large format. Its purpose
was to reproduce art previously reproduced in Tolkien calendars.
In the process, unfortunately some of Tolkien's pictures were
enlarged considerably -- e.g. the unfinished watercolor sketch of
the Elvenking's gate, which in the original is quite small. Many also
were reproduced with very inaccurate colour. In Artist & Illustrator
we were careful never to reproduce Tolkien's art larger than it is in
the original, and to achieve the closest colour reproduction possible
given the technology (and given that we and HarperCollins were
working with a printer far distant, in Hong Kong). Only a dust-jacket
design for The Two Towers came out with colour slightly off, due
to a bad transparency; this was caught too late to correct.

Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull

BH

Thanks, Garm and Khamul. We spent most of the day working outside, away from the computer. We remembered answering this question before somewhere, and are glad to be reminded where it was. We made very brief comments about Artist and Illustrator and Pictures in the 'Reader's Guide' volume of the Companion and Guide, as well as in the introduction to 'Published Art by J.R.R. Tolkien' in the 'Chronology' volume, but will put a note about it also on our web site.

Wayne and Christina

Trotter!, you damn nit-picker!

That's the way Wayne (I always assumed; presuming the format didn't accommodate italics) typed titles. I'm sure he'll correct me on this!

i.e.
_J.R.R. Tolkien, Artist & Illustrator_
_The Two Towers_
etcetera

You couldn't just have edited it once?

BH

You've caught me out (I think a lot of people don't know today that _ means _italics_), missed one the first time round, so had to edit it twice.