Götz Kluge's photos with the keyword: Snark

My Snark Firefox theme. See also: snrk.de/firefox-snark-theme

[left]: Redrawn segment from one of Henry Holiday's pencil drafts for the depiction of the Baker's visit to his uncle (1876) in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark . Below the draft you see a segment of the final – and less daring – illustration. [right]: John Everett Millais : Redrawn Segment from Christ in the House of His Parents (1850) depicting Mary (and a part of Christ's face in the upper right corner). Below that segment you see a larger segment from Millais' painting. This example shows how Holiday worked on the construction of his conundrums in his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark . Even though Holiday copied a face from a face, he reinterprated shapes of face elements from the source face in order to represent different face elements with a resembling shape in the target face. The baker's ear is based on a shape in the depiction of Marie's face which is no ear. The same partially applies to the Baker's nose and the baker's eye. Such kind of pictorial obfuscation should not be a surprise as The Hunting of the Snark is a poem in which readers had been searching textual allusions since 1876. (Too obvuous allusions are too boring.) The focus on textual analysis of the Snark seems to lead us to underestimate Holiday's paralleling Carroll's wordplay with is own means as an graphical artist.

Alfred Parsons' depiction of Charles Darwin's study in Downe. The wood cutter was J. Tynan. I assume that Alfred Parsons quoted shapes from Henry Holiday's illustration (cut by Joseph Swain) to The Bakers Tale in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark in a similar manner as Henry Holiday used shapes in the works of earlier artists perhaps in order to "point" to these works. The match of each single shape could be quite incidental, but the the spacial relation of most shapes to each other also matches well. That is less likely to be just incidental. (Alfred Parsons' depiction of Charles Darwin's new study is used here with permission by Dr. John van Wyhe, darwin-online.org.uk/. Henry Holiday's illustration has been scanned from a book published in 1911.) This is one of the images which I posted on Flickr a few years ago. It is an earlier version of the image below:

My first comparison related to The Banker (2009). After more than one year I suddenly understood Holiday's nose job:

Segments from [left, vertically stretched]: The top of the fireplace in Alfred Parsons' depiction (1882) of Charles Darwin's study in Downe [right]: an illustration (1876, printed 1911) by Henry Holiday to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark Rescaleable formats for printing posters: PDF (7.7 MB) and SVGZ (8.3 MB). (The segment of Alfred Parsons' depiction of Charles Darwin's new study is used here with permission by Dr. John van Wyhe, darwin-online.org.uk/ . Henry Holiday's illustration has been scanned from a 1911 book.)

Rotated segment from John Ruskin's Gneiss Rock (Glenfinlas, 1853; now in the Ashmolean Museum ) mounted into Holiday's illustration (1876, cut by Joseph Swain) to the chapter The Vanishing in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark .

[left]: Henry Holiday's back cover illustration (1876) to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark . [right]: Allegorical English School painting (ca. 1610, redrawn, color desaturated and rearranged 2013) of Queen Elizabeth I at Old Age with allegory of Death and Father Time . (Location of original painting: Corsham Court, EAN-Number: 4050356835081) www.corsham-court.co.uk/Pictures/Commentary.html : "This portrait of Elizabeth I illustrates the difficulties she encountered during her troubled reign. For example, conflict between Protestants and Catholics was rife and the re-drafting of the Book of Common Prayer (held in her left hand) was a sensitive issue of the time." Changes of lower segment: Shifted mirror view [inset]: The Bellman , detail from Henry Holiday's front cover illustration (1876) to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark .

Segments from • [left, vertically stretched]: Photo (before 1882) of the top of the fireplace in Charles Darwin's study • [center, vertically stretched]: from Alfred Parsons' depiction (1882) of Charles Darwin's study in Down • [right]: an illustration (1876) by Henry Holiday to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark This is not one of Henry Holiday's allusions. Here Alfred Parsons perhaps alluded to Holiday's illustration. Parsons did not simply copy a photo, he also rearranged the fire place decoration a bit.

#1 - (allusion to the bedpost #3): 1876, Henry Holiday: Segment of an illustration to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (vectorized after a scan from an 1911 edition of the Snark ) #2 - (allusion to the bedpost #3 and to Philip Galle's print #4): 1850, the young John the Baptist in John Everett Millais : Christ in the House of His Parents (aka The Carpenter's Shop ). The left leg of the boy looks a bit deformed. This is no mistake. Probably Millais referred to #3 and to #4. #3 - (Henry VIII's bedpost): 16th century, anonymous: Redrawn segment of Edward VI and the Pope, An Allegory of Reformation , (mirror view). #4 - (bedpost #3 alludes to bedpost #4): 1564, Redrawn segment of a print Ahasuerus consulting the records by Philip Galle after Maarten van Heemskerck. The resemblance of #4 to the image #3 (the bedpost) was shown by the late Dr. Margaret Aston in 1994 in The King's Bedpost: Reformation and Iconography in a Tudor Group Portrait (p. 68). She also compared the bedpost to Heemskerck's Esther Crowned by Ahasuerus .

[left]: mirrored view of details from in Henry Holiday's illustration The Vanishing to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876) [right]: segments from Allegory of Iconoclasm by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder (1566-1568)

[right]: Henry Holiday's depiction of the Billiard marker in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark . The face in color is Henry George Liddell's face (by Hubert von Herkomer) . Liddell was Carroll's (Dodgson's) superior in Christ Church, Oxford. (In the image I wrote "George Henry Liddell". But I am to lazy to correct that mistake now.) [left]: The left image shows Holiday's draft for the right picture and an image depicting Liddell at age 28. That clear resemblance in Holiday's draft of the Billiard marker to Carroll's boss perhaps was a bit too much for Carroll. In the right picture the resemblance is weaker, but the asymmetry of the eyes and eyebrows still is there. In that final illustration Holiday was more cautious: He gave an older Liddell a wig (which slipped a bit out of position) and chopped of his chin.

Detail from Henry Holiday's illustration to the back cover of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876). I don't unterstand this pattern (if it is a pattern). Perhaps it is not meant to be understood. Or it is no "meaningful" pattern at all. The pattern is clearly distinguishable from its environment. The letter-like shapes shown below the image are the result of very simple linear transformations using GIMP. Yet, I still can't say whether these are letters or just meaningless shapes. Is there any meaning? Should the "letters" be rotated and/or mirrored again? Is there a word game ("Anne I" beside a buoy) related to Anne Boleyn? (In his illustrations, Holiday clearly alluded to other historical figures related to Anne Bolyen, e.g. Queen Elizabeth I.)

Segment of an illustration by Henry Holiday (cut by Joseph Swain) in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark , 1876 The segment on the lower right side is Charles Darwin's Tree of Evolution or Tree of Life sketch in his 1st notebook, page 36, 1837-1838. I learned, that Darwin did not keep his notebook secret after the publication of On the Origin of Species , but I do not know of any presentation of his sketch before 1876. Thus, the resemblance between the "weed" and Darwin's evolutionary tree sketch propably is purely incidental. Postprocessing: GIMP perspective transformation tool Questions: (1) When did Charles Darwin publish a facsimile of his sketch fo the first time? When (e.g. in lectures etc.) was it presented for the first time? (2) Or is there a completely different explanation? Holiday's "weed" also could allude to an eagle riding a wild boar .

Henry Holiday's depiction of the Bellman in fhe front cover illustration to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark and Father Time from an allegorical English School painting (ca. 1610) depicting Queen Elizabeth I at Old Age . That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold; What hath quench'd them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace! It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it: The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg'd their possets, That death and nature do contend about them, Whether they live or die.

Alfred Parsons' depiction of Charles Darwin's Study in Downe, drawn from a photo and engraved by J. Tynan, signed in August 1882, published in an article by Alfred R. Wallace in the Century Magazine ( The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine ), Volume 25, Nov. 1882 to April 1883. (Alfred Parsons' depiction of Charles Darwin's new study is used here with permission by Dr. John van Wyhe, darwin-online.org.uk/ ). The little zoo, which Parsons (and Tynan) hid in his illustration, is highlighted by coloring the animals. Even when depicting real objects, artist can "play" with that reality. But perhaps I also just fell victim to zoomorphism.

The color markers in both images show, to which pictorial elements in a 1674 print Henry Holiday alluded in his illustration to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (lower image, 1876) in the chapter The Hunting . The print (upper image by an anonymous artist, redrawn by me) is the orartie van de Professor L. Wolsogen over syndroom en de nytlegging van de felue gadaen ... . The animals in that print are based on illustrations by M. Gheeraerts the Elder to Aesop's Fables. (The print now is located at British Museum, BM Satires 1047, reg.no.: 1868,0808.3286 . A scan of the original print showing more details can be obtained from the museum.) Holiday alluded to that 1674 image depicting William III as well as the allegorical figures for "religion" and "liberty". He discussed with Dodgson (Carroll) about the possible allegorical depiction of "care and hope". Interestingly, the two female members of the hunting crew also are quite similar to the allegories of "religion" and "liberty" shown in the 1674 print, the conflict between both probably being also conflict for the reverend Dodgson. I made this image in the year 2010. The little inset with the yellow frame was my first presentation (2009-07-09) of the comparison.

[left]: Redrawn segment from one of Henry Holiday's pencil drafts for the depiction of the Baker's visit to his uncle (1876) in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark . [right]: John Everett Millais : Redrawn Segment from Christ in the House of His Parents (1850) depicting Mary (and a part of Christ's face in the upper right corner). This example shows how Holiday worked on the construction of his conundrums in his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark . Even though Holiday copied a face from a face, he reinterprated shapes of face elements from the source face in order to represent different face elements with a resembling shape in the target face. The baker's ear is based on a shape in the depiction of Marie's face which is no ear. The same partially applies to the Baker's nose and the baker's eye. Such kind of pictorial obfuscation should not be a surprise as The Hunting of the Snark is a poem in which readers had been searching textual allusions since 1876. (Too obvuous allusions are too boring. The focus on textual analysis of the Snark seems to lead us to underestimate Holiday's paralleling Carroll's wordplay with is own means as an graphical artist. By the way: In 1882, Alfred Parsons turned the Baker's ear into a part of a chair in Charles Darwin's study at Downe . Holiday quoted and was quoted. Artists like Parsons, Holiday and Millais (see below) do such things and have fun when playing their game. Today Mahendra Singh is maintaining the tradition , in the Snark and beyond the beast. Extended version, Dec. 2014:

Anne Hale, Mrs Hoskins (1629) by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger and a segment (mirror view) of an illustration by Henry Holiday (cut by Joseph Swain) to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876)