A sad tale from John Howe. A bit of a reminder... if you ever so stumble across these originals, Id be very grateful to know. Its an old story, but it never hurts to put out a reminder now and again... In 1997, during the night of May 18th to 19th, a person or persons broke in to the Médiathèque of Sedan (in the Ardennes region, near Belgium in north-eastern France) and stole 11 originals from an exhibition of my Tolkien illustrations. Not just a case of grab-and-run, the thief chose the ones he preferred, breaking the frames and glass, and stripping the matte boards, probably rolling up the orginals. [...] Of the eight originals returned, one was damaged beyond repair: the Minas Tirith painting from the 1991 Tolkien Calendar. The seven others had been rolled, had their edges and corners tattered and folded, and been generally ill-treated. One or two had candle wax on them. To top it off, the police who handled the affair had dusted them for prints - front and back - with a tenacious dark grey powder which took my wife and I days to remove before we were able to retouch the artwork itself. The Dark Tower, for instance, had been rained upon, and as well as being folded and battered, not to mention the fingerprint powder. The remaing three paintings were never recovered: - Gandalf the Grey - The Uruk-hai - Eowyn and the Nazgul.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 09:55:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015