Götz Kluge's photos with the keyword: visuelle Semiotik

Knight Letter (ISSN 0193-886X) of the LCSNA (Lewis Carroll Society of North America), Fall 2017, № 99 Details: snrk.de/knight-letter-links/kl-fall2017

· from www.academia.edu/9964379/Schnarkverschlimmbesserung [1910]: Illustration by Henry Holiday (illustrator) and Joseph Swain (wood cutter) to the chapter The Banker's Fate in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark ("corrected" by Macmillan in 1910) [1876]: Detail from an illustration by Henry and Swain to the chapter The Banker's Fate in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1st edition, 1876) [1856]: Detail (mirror view) from The Bone Player (1856) by William Sidney Mount, now displayed in MFA, Boston. “Improvement” in German is “Verbesserung”. If things get worse, a “Verschlimmerung” has happened. Jokingly (Germans sometimes can do that) we call “Verschlimmbesserung” what has been made worse after someone tried to improve it. That is what the publisher Macmillan did about 100 years ago. They removed a white spot from the illustration by Henry Holiday (illustrator) and Joseph Swain (wood cutter) to the chapter The Banker's Fate in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876). I found this Verschlimmbesserung in a smaller low-quality Snark edition published by Macmillan in 1910. Perhaps the publisher thought that the white spot was Joseph Swain's mistake. But would Henry Holiday and C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) have tolerated such a mistake? As these perfectionists wouldn't have accepted any bad craftsmanship, the white spot must have had a purpose:

[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.

See also: www.academia.edu/9964379/Schnarkverschlimmbesserung In a 1910 edition of The Hunting of the Snark , an alledged error, which is not an error, had been removed. However, the removed white spot had a reason, as you see in the inset. The inset shows a segment from a 1876 edition with the white spot and a segment from The Bone Player (1856) by William Sidney Mount with a white spot (depicting a reflection from a glass). [left]: Segment from an Illustration by Henry Holiday to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876). [right, mirror view]: The Bone Player (1856) by William Sidney Mount, now displayed in MFA, Boston.

In a 1910 edition of The Hunting of the Snark , an alledged error, which is not an error, had been removed. However, the removed white spot had a reason, as you see in the inset. The inset shows a segment from a 1876 edition with the white spot and a segment from The Bone Player (1856) by William Sidney Mount with a white spot (depicting a reflection from a glass).

513 · · He was black in the face, and they scarcely could trace 514 · · · · The least likeness to what he had been: 515 · · While so great was his fright that his waistcoat turned white- 516 · · · · A wonderful thing to be seen! This is probably one of the strongest examples for resemblances between graphical elements in Henry Holiday's illustrations (1876, cut by Joseph Swain) and graphical elements in another image. Sometimes Holiday mirrored his pictorial quotes: Here Holiday vertically flipped the "nose" of Gheeraert's "head". I flipped it back. 2011-12-12 2014-02-22 As for the image on the top of this page: [left]: The Banker after his encounter with the Bandersnatch, depicted in Henry Holiday's illustration (woodcut by Joseph Swain for block printing) to the chapter "The Banker's Fate" in Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" (scanned from an 1876 edition of the book) [right]: a redrawn and horizontally compressed and reproduction of "The Image Breakers" (1566-1568) aka "Allegory of Iconoclasm", an etching by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder (British Museum, Dept. of Print and Drawings, 1933.1.1..3, see also Edward Hodnett: Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, Utrecht 1971, pp. 25-29). Also I flipped the "nose" vertically. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Version, 2000x2000: www.ipernity.com/doc/goetzkluge/36260048

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:

The comparison shows illustrations [left side] by Gustave Doré (to John Milton's Paradise Lost , Book VI, 1866 and [center] by Henry Holiday (to The Hunting of the Snark , 1876).

[top]: Detail from the etching (1566-1568) The Image Breakers by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder. [center]: Detail from the illustration (1876) by Henry Holiday to The Hunting of the Snark . C. L. Dodgson did not want Henry Holiday to depict the Snark in the illustrations to The Hunting of the Snark . But Holiday was allowed to let it appear veiled by its "gown, bands, and wig" in The Barrister's Dream . [bottom]: Redrawn image from a concept draft by C. L. Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll). The original drawing was part of a lot consisting of an 1876 edition of The Hunting of the Snark and a letter (dated 1876-01-04) by Dodgson to Henry Holiday. The lot was auctioned by Doyle New York (Rare Books, Autographs & Photographs - Sale 13BP04 - Lot 553) offered in November 2013. The whole lot was sold for US$ 25000. ( www.doylenewyork.com/asp/fullcatalogue.asp?salelot=13BP04+++553+&refno=++953647&image=2 ) · This shows: First C. L. Dodgson defined the concept [bottom], then Henry Holiday did the artwork (including the allusions to Gheeraert's "head" [top]) and finally Joseph Swain cut the illustration [center] into a woodblock.

upper inset: Henry Holiday's depiction of the Billiard marker in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876). background: Henry George Liddell (painted by Sir Hubert von Herkomer in 1891) . Liddell was Carroll's (Dodgson's) superior in Christ Church, Oxford. As for the time line, of course Holiday could not have alluded to this painting. lower inset: The comparison shows Henry Holiday's first depiction (draft) of the Billiard marker in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark . The face on the right side is Henry George Liddell's face at a youger age. The image (right side; from a portrait by George Cruikshan) shows Liddell at age 28. Such a clear resemblance of Holiday's draft of the Billiard marker to Carroll's boss perhaps was a bit too risky for Carroll. The similarity wasn't sufficiently deniable. In the final illustration the resemblance is much weaker, but the asymmetry of the eyes and eyebrows still is there.

[left]: Segment from an Illustration by Henry Holiday to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876). [right, mirror view]: Segment from The Bone Player (1856) by William Sidney Mount, now displayed in MFA, Boston. Later Macmillan damaged the puzzle: They removed the white spot. In a 1910 edition of The Hunting of the Snark , the white spot had disappeared. However, it had a reason, as you see in the inset. The inset shows a segment from a 1876 edition with the white spot and a segment from The Bone Player (1856) by William Sidney Mount with a white spot (reflection from a glass).

[left]: Segment from an Illustration by Henry Holiday to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876). [right, mirror view]: The Bone Player (1856) by William Sidney Mount, now displayed in MFA, Boston. See also: www.academia.edu/9889413/The_Bankers_Face

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

513 · · He was black in the face, and they scarcely could trace 514 · · · · The least likeness to what he had been: 515 · · While so great was his fright that his waistcoat turned white- 516 · · · · A wonderful thing to be seen! This is probably one of the strongest examples for resemblances between graphical elements in Henry Holiday's illustrations (1876, cut by Joseph Swain) and graphical elements in another image. In this case the images are [left]: The Banker after his encounter with the Bandersnatch , depicted in a segment of Henry Holiday 's illustration to The Banker's Fate in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (scanned from an 1876 edition of the book) and [right]: a horizontally compressed copy of The Image Breakers (1566-1568) aka Allegory of Iconoclasm , an etching by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder (British Museum, Dept. of Print and Drawings, 1933.1.1..3, see also Edward Hodnett: Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder , Utrecht 1971, pp. 25-29). I mirrored the "nose" about a horizontal axis.

From Pope to Wood Shavings [left]: Rotated segment from John Everett Millais : Christ in the House of His Parents (1850). [center]: As above. Blurred. [right]: Rotated segment from anonymous: Edward VI and the Pope, a Tudor anti-papal allegory of reformation, mirrored view (16th century).

Finding Millais' allusions to an anonymous painter is a "bycatch" of my Snark hunt. [top]: John Everett Millais : Christ in the House of His Parents aka The Carpenter's Shop (1850). Location: Tate Britain (N03584) , London. Literature: * Deborah Mary Kerr (1986): John Everett Millais's Christ in the house of his parents ( circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/26546 ) p.34 in (01) Éva Péteri (2003): Victorian Approaches to Religion as Reflected in the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites, Budapest 2003, ISBN 978-9630580380 (shortlink: www.snrk.de/EvaPeteri.htm ) * Albert Boime (2008): Art in an Age of Civil Struggle, 1848-1871 p. 225-364: The Pre-Raphaelites and the 1848 Revolution ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0226063283 ) [bottom]: Anonymous : Edward VI and the Pope , An Allegory of Reformation, mirrored view (16th century, NPG 4165 ). Iconoclasm depicted in the window. Under the "window" 3rd from left is Thomas Cranmer who wrote the 42 Articles in 1552. Edward VI and the Pope (NPG 4165) was, until 1874, the property of Thomas Green, Esq., of Ipswich and Upper Wimpole Street , a collection 'Formed by himself and his Family during the last Century and early Part of the present Century' (Roy C. Strong: Tudor and Jacobean Portraits , 1969, p.345). Thus, when Millais' Christ in the House of His Parents ('The Carpenter's Shop') was painted in 1849-1850, the 16th century painting was part of a private collection. It was sold by Christie's 20 March 1874 (lot 9) to a buyer unknown to me, that is, when Holiday started with his illustrations to The Hunting of the Snark . Location: National Portrait Gallery, London

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.)

#1, left - (allusion to the bedpost #3): 1876, Henry Holiday (engraver: Joseph Swain): The illustration detail on the very left side is a vectorized scan from Holiday's illustration to an 1910 edition of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark . #1, right: Additionally you see a segment from Holiday's preperatory draft. #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 .