Anne Myers (silent_lorelei) wrote in whatwasthatbook,

The Impossible Quest: Lord of the Rings Artbook

Okay, this one may be double-hard because I'm looking for an artbook, which means I can't rely on things like plot and I have almost no text to help with, even though I know the book has some. Visual readers, I'm begging for your help!

I've been trying to find an artbook for The Lord of the Rings that my mother had when I was a kid. It was brimming with full-page (or two-page, even) paintings and scared the living stuffing out of me, which is not a surprise considering that I was six and looking at pictures of the horrors of Moria and the monsters of Mordor. Nevertheless, I've been looking for the book everywhere, since it's one of my earliest Tolkien memories and shaped a lot of my later impressions of characters when I read the books... and, of course, I can't find even vague evidence that it even existed, let alone who the artists or author might have been.

There are a few specific images I remember strongly, but they're getting me nothing at all from the almighty Google:

1) Shelob's Lair. The painting is of Frodo and Sam with the phial of Galadriel between them, clinging to it in the dark (which is kind of green-tinted, I think, from the phial's radiance?) while Shelob creeps up behind them. She's enormous compared to them, with very glowy clusters of eyes, and my vague childhood recollection is that she has a vaguely humanoid-looking abdomen/body/torso area (not fully humanoid or anything, just kind of a suggestive shape). I can't remember exactly what she looked like, because my childhood self was scared stiff of her and I think may have blocked some of the memory. I also remember a fragment of text on the opposite page; I have no idea how the paragraph started, but it ended, "Frodo and Sam could see only her eyes."

2) The Watcher in the Water. Unlike the many, many later versions of this that look kind of like tentacle beasts, this was an image of a multitude of slender blue arms with recognizable hands at the end of them, reaching out to try to ensnare the Fellowship outside Moria. Bill the pony is seen fleeing away down a side path, though things are not looking good for him. I want to say that he's grey, maybe? And that there is possibly a tentacle already on him even though he's still running? Can't be a very solid one, though, because as a child I thought he was totally escaping and was very sad when I read the books and Sam was convinced he'd died. Or maybe I just didn't want the pony to die because I was six so I decided he didn't. I have no idea. The Watcher is coming from the water sort of to the left, with the Fellowship falling back to the right toward the open doors of the mines.

You'd think I'd be able to find some mention of one of these paintings somewhere, but no dice. Part of the problem is the Jackson trilogy of movies, which makes Google positively glutted with the concept art and CGI for them and which has spawned huge numbers of fan and professional paintings of them since, drowning out the older paintings. Another part is that aside from that one line on Shelob's page, I have no text to search for and no idea who the authors might be. (Oh, and googling that line above and variations thereof didn't get me anywhere, either.) I want to say the book is from the late 70s or early 80s, or somewhere in that area, but it could be from as late as the late 80s/early 90s. It's definitely not the Hildebrandts.

Anyone have any idea which book this might be?

EDIT: Found! It looks like this is A Middle-Earth Album with art by Joan Wyatt! Thanks, everyone!
Tags: *found the book!, author surname: w, cat: art & artists, cat: monsters, cat: painters & paintings, genre: fantasy
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