Other Alice's - What Tenniel didn't sketch, and Caterpillars

I can’t help thinking that once the copyright ran out on the Alice books and they could be illustrated by other artists from 1907, being engaged to illustrate the book might well have been something of a thankless task. After all, you’re always going to be compared to Tenniel, probably unfavourably. You either do something which looks like it’s been influenced by Tenniel, or you try to do something completely different, which risks alienating those for whom Tenniel is the gold standard.

Of course, one thing you could do is to illustrate episodes from the books that Tenniel didn’t use. The first and one of the most obvious is Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

Tenniel’s frontispiece shows the courtroom with the king and queen of Hearts, the first illustration as such is the white rabbit, and then the next shows Alice peeping behind a curtain after she has finished falling. I don’t know why he didn’t illustrate her falling, but then he produced forty two illustrations as it was. Maybe it was not required by Lewis Carroll. He was actually the first person to illustrate the story. He first wrote it in longhand, complete with his own illustrations. When you see them you do understand why friends advised him to get a professional illustrator when having the book published. Quite a few of Tenniel’s illustrations do follow the episodes that Carroll illustrated, and Carroll himself did not draw Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Still, whatever the reason why Tenniel didn’t illustrate this episode, Well at least it gave later illustrators an opportunity. This is my copy of Harry Furniss’ illustration of the scene.

Harry Furniss did work with both John Tenniel and Lewis Carroll. He began working for Punch in 1880, wat which time Tenniel was the chief cartoonist. Furniss was commissioned by Carroll to illustrate his two Sylvie and Bruno books, neither of which is much read today. Tenniel reputedly said that Furniss would find it an unpleasant experience working with Carroll, and this seems to have been the case. So the story goes Furniss would pretend to be out whenever Carroll came to look at his work, and he vowed never to work with Carroll again.

Carroll passed away in 1898. Several editions appeared in America in the 1890s and early 1900s. but when the copyright expired in 1907 a huge number of editions appeared with the work of other illustrators. Harry Furniss’ illustrations appeared in 1908 in Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia.

I think that if you look at my copy you might well see that Harry Furniss’ work does bear some similarities with Tenniel’s. I’m particularly thinking about the heavy shading with hatching and cross hatching. Tenniel’s illustrations do often look like beautifully posed and staged tableaux, while Furniss’ do seem to have more movement and spontaneity. Furniss’ Alice is brunette, and looks rather older than Tenniel’s.

By way of comparison I’ve copied Ralph Steadman’s illustration of Alice falling from his 1967 illustrated edition. By contrast this is quite a minimalist illustration, with a couple of bookshelves, a map, a picture and a jar doing all the work to show this is a rabbit hole. But the position Alice is in, with her ridiculously long, thin limbs perfectly captures the feeling of falling. I’ve copied several of Ralph Steadman’s illustrations before. As I have said, they’re marmite for me. I either absolutely love them, or I have a strong reaction against them.

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Another scene which Tenniel did not illustrate but many later illustrators did is Alice being called a serpent by a pigeon when her head has stretched up into the sky. Again, it is an episode with plenty of scope for visual representation. In this case Lewis Carroll did illustrate the episode. He actually made two sketches, one showing Alice with normal sized head but impossibly long, straight neck shooting out above the tree tops, the other showing her with long, curving neck being harangued by the pigeon.

Last year I copied my favourite rendition of Alice being accosted by the pigeon, which was made in 1907 by T.H. Robinson. I love the way he captures the foreshortening effect of looking down on Alice’s body from being roughly eye level with her head. Her neck is elongated, but nothing like as much as is often the case when illustrators tackle this episode. Robinson was the brother of the much more famous William Heath Robinson, and Charles Robinson who also illustrated Alice in Wonderland I 1907, several of whose illustrations I’ve copied in the past.

Compare this with my copy of Steadman’s 1967 illustration. This may sound like a strange thing to say, but this is far more similar to Lewis Carroll’s original illustration than Robinson’s is. Steadman's Alice is very different to Carroll’s dark haired Alice, but both head and bird are in similar positions, and the neck curves in similar fashion. I think that the pigeon is a real tour de force.

This next rendition is my copy of a Harry Rountree illustration. Harry Rountree was a New Zealand born illustrator and cartoonist who was successful in New Zealand before moving to London in 1901. During his career he worked for many publications, including Punch.Rountree actually illustrated Wonderland twice, first in 1908 and then 20 years later in 1928. Judging by Alice’s hairstyle I’d say that this is more likely the 1928 version. In this one Rountree opted to emphasize the serpentine nature of Alice’s neck, and he’s by no means the only illustrator to do this. Again, I think that the pigeon is very well rendered, and indeed living creatures were something of a speciality for Harry Rountree. 

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You know, I’ve always had a sneaking fondness for the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. This mark you even though Tenniel’s illustration of the caterpillar is one of his less effective in my opinion. I mean, it’s certainly clever the way that the two top pairs of legs do actually look like a face – possibly the face of Mr. Punch – but I’d love to have seen just how he would have rendered the caterpillar’s face head on.

Last year I made a copy of Arthur Rackham’s illustration of the caterpillar, which is one of my favourites. Arthur Rackham was a leading light during what has been called the golden age of British illustration from the 1890s until the First World War. His illustrations for the book were a mixture of colour plates, like the one I’ve copied here, and black and white line drawings. Rackham shows the caterpillar’s face properly, and so what we get, a caterpillar’s body bearing a rather wizened, bespectacled and almost human head is pretty much the norm for illustrators of Alice. If you look at this, by Harry Rountree, you can probably see what I mean. 

Rountree doesn’t put Alice in the picture, which is more unusual, but he does give us a traditional hookah and mushroom.

Harry Furniss rendered it like this. He differs from Tenniel in as much as the mushroom is smaller and Alice can clearly see the caterpillar. You can also see how Furniss’ Alice is older and more mature than Tenniel’s. His caterpillar is slightly less human, having what appears to be a beak, although like Rountree he does go along with the convention of giving the caterpillar one pair of arms with very human hands on the end, and feet only at the end of his body.

One of the earlier renditions of the caterpillar is this one I copied which was by Charles Robinson. In terms of composition this is like a mirror image of Tenniel’s. With Alice peering over the mushroom on the left rather than the right, and the caterpillar on the right rather than the left. It means we don’t really see his face, which is a pity. One thing he does, which Tenniel also did but a lot of later illustrations don’t is to provide the foliage all round the scene.

T.H. Robinson also illustrated the caterpillar, and I copied this last year. Like his brother Charles, and Tenniel TH Robinson did at least illustrate the whole scene, with many mushrooms rather than just the one and this is something original. The caterpillar himself does have a very human face. The features look old and tired, which kind of matches the sleepy languid voice that Lewis Carroll gave him in the text. To be honest though this caterpillar doesn’t really look like a caterpillar at all. His only visible limbs are human arms and legs, he is fully clothed and this is topped off by a stage magician’s turban.

This is the first illustration I’ve copied by one of the best loved of Alice illustrators, Willy Pogany. He illustrated the book in 1929. Pogany was born in Austria-Hungary, and worked all over Europe in the early years of the 20^th century before finally emigrating to the USA. Many of his illustrations for Alice are deceptively simple. In this one we only get the caterpillar, and half the hookah. No mushroom, no Alice, no foliage. His caterpillar, though, is far more of a caterpillar, with distinctly non-human limbs evenly spaced along his body.

I know what you’re asking yourself. What did Ralph Steadman do with the caterpillar? Well, here’s my copy. My guess is that your first reaction when you look at this is that it’s very different from what has gone before. For one thing, the caterpillar is facing away from Alice. For another thing there’s no hookah, he is smoking a cigarette (of some kind) in a cigarette holder. Also he looks totally wired, with his wild unkempt hair and his wide, unmatching eyes. Look at it again, though. We have Alice peering over the top of the mushroom – we’ve seen that before. The caterpillar seems to have a vaguely human arm and hand, and there’s no mistaking that his two legs are very human, clad in pinstripe trousers and what look like sandals. If I’m honest this not actually one of my favourite Steadman illustrations. I just have an issue with the caterpillar looking so wired. The text describes him talking in a languid, sleepy voice.

Alice Project - COMPLETED!

Yes, good people, today I have completed my challenge to copy all 92 of Sir John Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. In my last post I reported that I had five left to draw. Here they are:-

What do I say now? Well, in one way the whole challenge was harder than I ever thought, in as much as none of my copies is perfect and some of them just aren’t any good at all. On the other hand, though, I have finished it. To be honest, I wasn’t sure that I would, yet going about it systematically I’ve completed the challenge quite a bit quicker than I thought I would.

It might be a good idea to leave it a few days for my thoughts to crystallise before posting my thoughts on the whole challenge. But just to kick off, I’m sure that I’ve already made the point in a previous post that the illustrations in Looking Glass are as a rule darker than those in Wonderland, both literally and figuratively.I stand by that observation. It shouldn’t maybe come as a surprise that there are notable differences between the two sets – it was several years between Tenniel made both sets. Another thing that has struck me is that to my eyes, Alice in Looking Glass looks a tiny bit older – a tiny bit more mature – than she does in Wonderland. Her face is a little thinner, and no quite as large when compared with her limbs and body. I couldn’t say whether this was intentional on Tenniel’s part – it’s certainly possible, bearing in mind his prodigious visual memory.

Some of the illustrations to Looking Glass seem to me to be more complex than anything else in Wonderland. While there are some quite complicated compositions in the earlier book, they are so skillfully composed that there’s none where you can’t take in the main detail and the main narrative in a single glance. There are some in Looking Glass where I don’t think that this is the case. For example, the battle scene that I posted last time, and the fireworks scene above.

I think that I’m going to just sit on my laurels for a bit, take in what I’ve managed, and think about what’s next.

Alice Project update

 Apologies. It has been 9 days since my previous post. That's the bad news. he good news is that in those 9 days I have made no fewer than 20 copies. Without further ado :- 

There are only 3 illustrations accompanying the Walrus and the Carpenter, as opposed to four accompanying Father William in Alice in Wonderland.

The Walrus and the Carpenter poem forms part of the Tweedledum and Tweedledee episode. I sketched the first illustration of them last year - and I also had a go at Mervyn Peake's interpretation.

I was not looking forward to making the sketch above, considering what a pigs ear I made of the sheep in the boat when I copied it. I'm very pleased with how this one did turn out. 

20 in 9days - that's really not bad going at all, and a few of them are even quite good. That puts the totals at - Looking Glass - 45/50 - Overall 87/92. I can see the finish line now - hopefully I'll get there some time next week.

Alice Project- Looking Glass update

Welsh has a wonderful word – hwyl. There’s no single word in English which encapsulates it. Basically it kind of means heart, enthusiasm, drive. I’ve had the hwyl for making copies in the last few days – maybe not the skill to do it very well, but hey, you can’t have everything. Here we are then.

The kitten. I like this one even though it’s one of the simpler illustrations in the book. It was quick to make as well, couldn’t have been an hour from start to finish.

Alice going into the looking glass. I wasn’t looking forward to copying this one and the next one. There just looked to be an awful lot of rather complicated shading. As it happened though I really enjoyed it.Because Alice is facing away from us I didn’t have to worry about her face.

Alice coming out on the other side of the looking glass. Yes, I did have to worry about her face on this one. I didn’t do too bad a job on it either. I tried to do what Tenniel did, and drew this on the other side of the page showing Alice going into the glass.

The Red King and Red Queen. This is another pretty busy illustration. When I’m working my way through I’ve tried to be very systematic. Since setting myself the challenge I’ve tried to work through the remaining illustrations in the same order in which they appear in the text. This means I tend to look ahead to see just how complicated the next sketches are going to be and to get an idea of how long it’s likely to take to do them. I knew that this one was going to take a couple of hours, and it did, too.

Conversely, this one of the White Knight wasn’t going to be particularly irksome. I don’t know, the last three or four copies that I’ve made just aren’t quite as good as I’d like, even though it was quick and relatively simple to make.

I was quite pleased with this sketch showing the chessboard layout of Looking Glass Land when I made it, but looking at it again in the cold light of day, meh, it’s alright.

With this sketch of the Red Queen’s Race, I made the mistake of drawing Alice to small, so the whole sketch is too small. Again, it is okay but it’s not as good as I’d like to be. I like the idea of the red queen’s race, though, having to run as fast as you can to stay where you are. There’s a metaphor for life if I ever heard one.

To be fair this is a decent copy. It’s an interesting sketch this one. The guy wearing the newspaper hat does seem to have a strong resemblance to Benjamin Disraeli, the former Prime Minister who was one of the targets of Tenniel’s satirical cartoons on many occasions.

There are three illustrations of the strange and unusual flies that Alice encounters an I’ve copied the first – he rocking horse fly. Not a bad job but it’s a simpler original illustration in the first place.

Observations? Well, I think it’s probably better to wait until I complete the challenge before I try to make any hard and fast pronouncements. So, the current score is

Looking Glass – 25/50

Overall – 67/92

On to Through the Looking Glass

Well, even though I’ve completed my copies of all of forty two of Sir John Tenniel’s original illustrations for Alice in Wonderland this is no time for resting on my laurels. I’ve still got thirty five of the original illustrations to Alice Through the Looking Glass to make.

And so to Alice’s Adventures Through The Looking Glass. Now, when I completed my copies of the illustrations to Alice in Wonderland I had also already made copies of fifteen of the illustrations for Looking Glass. This meant that the total stood at 57 out of 92 in total, and 15 out of 50 for Looking Glass.

Carroll had made an inspired choice in persuading Tenniel to illustrate the first book, especially since he did consider using his own illustrations. Carroll wrote the original manuscript, as “Alice’s Adventures Underground” in a longhand manuscript which he illustrated himself and presented to Alice Liddell as a Christmas Present in 1863. He was persuaded to engage a professional, and settled on Tenniel. Originally asked for a dozen, Tenniel eventually provided forty two illustrations. Indications are that he found working with Carroll a frustrating experience, which may explain why he was so reluctant to illustrate Carroll’s follow up. Tenniel used the excuse that he was far too busy with his other work, and Carroll did explore the possibility of using other illustrators. Nobody would do it though, and indeed the common point of view was that he must find some way of persuading Tenniel. Eventually he did, although Tenniel said that he would only produce the illustrations required when he could find time away from other work. As a result it was a long time before the book could be published.

Originally the intention was to use Tenniel’s Jabberwocky illustration for the frontispiece. Carroll showed this to a number of friends, too many of whom expressed concern over its frightening appearance, and so he decided to instead use this illustration of the White Knight. Some people believe that the White Knight was based on Tenniel himself. Tenniel always denied this. The White Knight features in quite a few of the illustrations to Looking Glass. Medieval costumes and armour were a subject of interest to Tenniel so one can imagine the pleasure he derived from making the illustrations.

My initial feelings that as a rule the illustrations for Looking Glass are more complex and darker than those for Wonderland seemed to be confirmed. This illustration quite simply took hours to copy. 

16/50 Looking Glass – 58/92 Overall

Alice Project Update : Wonderland Completed

I have now completed making copies of all 42 of Sir John Tenniel’s original illustrations for Alice in Wonderland. Which doesn’t mean that my self-imposed challenge is complete since I’ve only copied fifteen of the original illustrations for Through the Looking Glass which means I have 35 still to do. Nonetheless I’m allowing myself a small celebration. So, let’s begin with looking at the last 3 copies:-

I’m not unhappy with his one. It shows Alice growing inside the courtroom, and it’s one of my better attempts at Alice’s face. In the original, I like the way that there’s so much more going on in this illustration than you take in with a glance and that’s something that it has in common with many of Tenniel’s original illustrations.

Like the first Cheshire Cat illustration this one was designed to fit around the text on the page. It’s a nice original, a companion piece to the frontispiece that I sketched a few days ago.

Finally the last illustration in the book, with Alice realising that they are all nothing but a pack of playing cards. Sadly another less than perfect rendition of Alice’s face. Once again an illustration that has more going on than you take in with one glance. Among the animals on the bottom I can see a duck (from the pool of tears?) a lizard (Bill?) a frog (footman?) and a white rabbit (work it out.)

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So what have I learned? Not sure really. I already knew that John Tenniel was an exceptionally brilliant illustrator with huge skill and an incredible visual imagination. With regards to that last point, Tenniel never used a model for Alice, yet he pretty much got her right every time he drew her. I couldn’t do that even though I had Tenniel’s work to copy.

As a rule, I think that Victorian illustrators and draughtsmen were masters in their use of hatching and cross hatching, and none more so than Tenniel. Doubtless this was necessitated by contemporary methods of reproducing images, having to sketch them onto wooden blocks to be engraved. It has been a real challenge trying to mimic some of the effects.

This is all a matter of personal taste, but I like the illustrations featuring fantastical animals best. I think that Tenniel was an incredible fantasy illustrator, with the sleeping gryphon from Wonderland and the Jabberwocky from Looking glass as really stand out pieces. His grotesques are amazing too – I think especially of the Duchess.

Finishing off, setting out to copy a Tenniel illustration is a mini voyage of discovery each time. It really has been very satisfying and pleasurable to put each one under the microscope, and get to know it better and to try to understand how it works.