0 favorites     2 comments    2 713 visits

See also...

lines and curves lines and curves


Art is Art Art is Art


Paintings Paintings


See more...

Keywords

juvenile books
Lewis Carroll
The Hunting of the Snark
Henry Holiday
Snark after May 2013
cryptomorph
crypromorphism
pictorial allusions
hidden images
monks
Edward VI
Allusionsforschung
allusion research
crossover
crossover books


Authorizations, license

Visible by: Everyone
All rights reserved

Photo replaced on 18 Jan 2014
2 713 visits


The Broker's and the Monk's Nose (with a little help)

The Broker's and the Monk's Nose (with a little help)
[left]: Segment from an illustration by Henry Holiday to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark depicting the Broker (upper left corner). The object he is holding at his lips is the handle of a malacca walking cane, a gesture associated with dandies in the Victorian era.
[right]: Segment from anonymous: Edward VI and the Pope, a Tudor anti-papal allegory of reformation (16th century).

Holidays Snark illustrations are conundrums. And they were constructed as conundrums. The colored boxes are meant as a little help to you. There is not only a relation between the patterns marked by the same color, also the topological relation between the patterns on the left side and the right side show some similarity.

The pattern in the orange frame on the lower left side clearly is an allusion to a rather unobtrusive pattern on the right side. This shows that Holiday did not "copy" patterns just because of they would contribute to the impressiveness of his illustrations. Holiday is not a plagiarist.

·

In 1922 (46 years after The Hunting of the Snark was published), Henry Holiday (the illustrator) wrote to George Sutcliffe (Sangorski & Sutcliffe, bookbinders, London): "... you will notice that the Broker in [the proof of the illustration to The Crew on Board] no. 5 is quite different to the one in [the later proof] no. 2. I had intended to give a caricature a the vulgar specimen of the profession, but Lewis Carroll took exception to this and asked me to treat the head in a less aggressive manner, and no. 2 is the result. I consider that no. 5 has much more character, but I understood L. Carroll's objection and agreed to tone him down. ..."

Charles Mitchel called the first design of the broker's face in the lower right corner of the print "conspiciously antisemitic". The change of the printing blocks must have been very important to Carroll, as it took the wood cutter Swain quite some effort to implement that change (see p. 102, Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, 1981 William Kaufmann edition).

As shown in the image above, the broker's face also appears in the upper left section of Holiday's illustration to The Hunting. Rather than by a "Semitic" face, Holiday may have been inspired by what could be a cliché of the face of a roman catholic monk depicted in the 16th century anti-papal painting Edward VI and the Pope.

·

Links:
www.reddit.com/r/museum/comments/4lrs3o/anonymous_king_edward_vi_and_the_pope_estimates
www.reddit.com/r/TheHuntingOfTheSnark/comments/3ul02u/the_brokers_and_the_monks_nose
www.academia.edu/9890076/The_Broker_and_the_Monk
www.facebook.com/snark150/posts/1647429028620386

Comments
 Götz Kluge
Götz Kluge club
Without the little help:
The Broker's and the Monk's Nose

h40

Millais, Anonymous, Galle
10 years ago. Edited 10 years ago.
 Götz Kluge
Götz Kluge club
Yes, different works of art. But they are connected. Henry Holiday found an interesting way to link his illustrations to the works of earlier artists.
10 years ago.

Sign-in to write a comment.