niedziela, 23 stycznia 2022

True Gandalf? No moustache

How do you think from which artist we could order a portrait of the real Gandalf, I mean ... Gandalf with a beard without a mustache? It may be a shock to many Tolkien lovers, but the appearance of Gandalf in the Professor's imagination was different than we thought so far. J. R. R. Tolkien in a note published in The Nature of Middle-earth, pp. 192-193 wrote:
"If I had known that Pauline Baynes was going to make a picture of Gandalf, I could have shown her a sketch I made long ago, showing him coming up the path to Bilbo’s hole with his (“battered”) blue hat more or less so. Or better: the picture from which my personal vision of him was largely derived. This is a picture postcard acquired years ago – probably in Switzerland. (...) He has a humorous but also compassionate expression – his mouth is visible and smiling because he has a white beard but no hair on his upper lip."

As Marcel Aubron-Bülles notes: 

[Tolkien] thought of the Madlener postcard - but he misremembered getting it in Switzerland. That is impossible. He had the postcard, as stated by Carpenter, in an envelope with him and on the back he wrote "origin of Gandalf.". By the time he had "invented" Gandalf this painting had not even been done.

Der Berggeist (Madlener) and Gandalf (Tolkien) - no moustache!

We lack graphics with such an image of Gandalf. Luckily we have a photo of Sir Ian McKellen from the make-up moment for the movie:
 
 
There is also a nice 19th-century photograph that I found in the archives that I think captures the nature of such a face of Gandalf: 
 
U. S. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles
("MacMillan’s Magazine" for May 1862)
 
Or maybe you have other suggestions? Feel free to comment.

Do you want more on Gandalf on my blog? See here.

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