Thurther Thurstan Copies

So, are you in the market for more comparisons between Sir John Teniel’s Alice illustrations and Edgar B. Thurstan’s? I hope so because that’s all I have for you.

Yesterday I made this copy of Edgar’s illustration of Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

Now, I don’t have a comparison here for the simple reason that Tenniel did not illustrate Alice falling down the hole. To me it’s always seemed like a bit of an omission. But then Lewis Carroll himself did not illustrate the scene for Alice’s Adventures Underground. Maybe he just never saw the visual potential. So this is Edgar without the temptation to draw heavily on Tenniel. Now, you have to accept that I’ve done my best with this one but it’s really not a great copy. Edgar’s, you will have to take my word for it, is a technically highly competent piece of work. I do wonder if he was inspired by anyone else’s illustration for this. I haven’t done any research on this yet, so it’s a case of watch this space.

This is a copy of Edgar’s illustration of the Wool and Water chapter of Looking Glass, followed by Tenniel's

Thurstan has once again shifted the position of the viewer, so we’re looking down rather as we did with the railway carriage illustration. If the virtually identical sheep isn’t enough to convince you that we have a deliberate borrowing from Tenniel, then just look at the way that Edgar has taken the kite, spade et al from the side of the counter in Tenniel’s and put them on the front of the counter in his.

Yes, well spotted, there is a big difference between the two. Edgar’s has an open door looking out onto a jetty with the ewe’s rowing boat. I can understand the logic behind the decision to depict the scene in this way. For Tenniel made two illustrations of the chapter, while Edgar had to get as much of it as possible into 1 illustration.

Here's my copy of the second of Edgar’s illustrations that I made today. As if you didn’t know, this is Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Tenniel's is underneath it.

I would say that Edgar is just a little further away from Tenniel than he usually is. The heads are very similar and they are wearing very similar caps. However there are differences in the clothes they wear. Tenniel’s figures wear schoolboy ‘skeleton suits’ that were old fashioned when he drew them. Edgar’s wear rather more modern waistcoats, jackets and trousers. All the time having Alice in her Victorian pinafore dress. Well, as we’ve said before, either Odham’s wanted to go for I can’t believe it’s not Tenniel, or Edgar decided to go that way for his own reasons.