Tea at Trianon: Peter Klúcik's Illustrations of 'The Hobbit'

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, May 15, 2020

Peter Klúcik's Illustrations of 'The Hobbit'

From Monster Brains:

Long-time illustrator Peter Klúcik was asked to illustrate J R R Tolkien's The Hobbit soon after communism fell in 1989. For this project he created around 40 illustrations that were rich in detail and conveyed the mysterious atmosphere of the book very well. But the publishing house commissioning them failed to adjust to the market economy and lost the right to publish the book. A second one approached him, but only for the book's cover. Then a third publishing house appeared on the scene - after the Tolkien-mania prompted by the 2001 release of the first film in The Lord of the Rings sequence -- but this was denied the copyright.

After all that, Klúcik made a decision: "I have had it with illustrations. I am going to paint!" He switched from illustration to painting, and since then he has been creating a fantasy world of mysterious animals using oil on canvas. He finds inspiration in the real animals he sees in books and on television documentaries, such as tigers, zebras, and rhinos. To these images he applies his wild imagination, twisting their bodies and playing with their fur and colours until they are transformed into new, unknown creatures living in fantastic surroundings.

Before he gave up illustration, Klúcik created pictures for around 40 books, including Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren and Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. But the book that enabled him to expand his imagination the most and brought him to the path he later set out on was the last one he illustrated - Tolkien's The Hobbit. From the evil-looking but funny hairy squirrels to the curly tails on the flying dragons, it was an easy transition to his dreamed-up world inhabited purely by animals. (Read more.)