What Do You Mean, "Good Morning"?
Before we set out on the great adventure of The Hobbit, let’s pause for a moment to look at the scene where it all began.
A few years ago someone asked me whether I have made an illustration of the opening scene of the Hobbit with Gandalf and Bilbo in front of the Bag End Door. They said they collected various depictions of it and there are dozens of illustrations by different artists; it is certainly one of the most often illustrated scenes from Tolkien's Legendarium.
Ever since then, I’ve been thinking about drawing this scene, which is truly one of the most iconic scenes from Tolkien’s books and the moment when it all began.
By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green, and the hobbits were still numerous and prosperous, and Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast smoking an enormous long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his woolly toes (neatly brushed) - Gandalf came by. (...)
All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which a white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots.
"Good morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green.
– J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit
I had drawn the Bag End Door itself once before. In 2021, inspired by an drawing challenge prompt "door". It was helpful if only to clarify my own idea of what the door Bag End should actually look like. In that picture I combined some elements of its portrayal in the films with my own imagination:
That picture was quite successful, but I was not really satisfied with my design and as soon as I finished it, I thought that I would like to try depicting it again.
And the suggestion to draw the opening scene from the Hobbit in 2023 was a good opportunity to do that.
If you like my illustration, you can also get an art print in my Etsy shop.
So let’s talk about how it came to be and the various interesting details worth noting.
Other Illustrations
When I began working on this illustration, I realized that there are truly countless depictions of it. As an example, I’ll mention just two here that influenced me the most.
One is a painting by Ted Nasmith. The earlier version, ‘An Unexpected Morning Visit’, was painted back in 1992, and I’d known it since childhood. Ted Nasmith painted the new version, ’One Morning Long Ago’ in 2005. I especially like the wide perspective, which beautifully captures the entire Bag End and its garden, as well as the hint of a view into the vast landscape that promises adventure, and the warm sunlight on the lush green spring grass. I think it captures the peaceful atmosphere of the beginning of The Hobbit quite well. It is also clear that Ted Nasmith based his illustration on Tolkien’s sketch (see below).
The second image that influenced me isn’t a standalone illustration, but part of The Hobbit graphic novel, illustrated by David Wenzel. Overall, I think it’s a very faithful visual adaptation of the book, especially in the depiction of the characters, and it often served as an inspiration for me in other parts of the story as well. But the depiction of the Bag End porch is less accurate.
Tolkien’s Art
Above all, however, I wanted to work with the pictures of J. R. R. Tolkien himself, as I always love to do when there are some available.
In this case, it is mainly an unfinished drawing titled 'Gandalf' (can be found in The Art of the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien and elsewhere), showing the wizard in front of the door just after Bilbo has hidden inside:
“Gandalf in the meantime was still standing outside the door, and laughing long but quietly. After a while he stepped up, and with the spike of his staff scratched a queer sign on the hobbit’s beautiful green front-door. Then he strode away, just about the time when Bilbo was finishing his second cake and beginning to think that he had escape adventures very well.” – The Hobbit
But also the lovely drawing of the interior: The Hall at Bag-End, Residence of B. Baggins Esquire. Not only because it gives us another glimpse at Bag End itself but also because it shows probably the best depiction of Bilbo himself ever drawn by Tolkien:
Even from these two pictures you can see that Tolkien’s idea of what exactly Bag End looked like changed over time. In the latter picture, you can see that on the outside of the door (which is visible because the door is open) there is decorative strap hinge, whereas in the former picture it is not.
I also used two other of Tolkien's sketches as a visual guide to the layout of the front door area: Bag End Underhill and One Morning Early in the Quiet of the World.
Composition
To clarify the composition for myself, I used Photoshop to combine Tolkien’s illustration of the door itself, Gandalf (whom I wanted to place somewhere other than where he appears in Tolkien’s painting), and Bilbo, and experimented a bit with their placement until I decided on the composition and the relative positioning of the characters and the door:
You can probably notice one significant difference here.
If you study Tolkien’s illustrations, you notice that he tends to draw his characters very small relative to the environment. In the picture of the Hall, Bilbo could barely reach the door-knob. I find it difficult to believe that this is really what their relative size should be.
Tolkien himself admitted in Letter 27: “My own pictures are an unsafe guide”. And in the same letter he commented on the problem with scale in his illustration of Bilbo sith Smaug, he pointed out that the hobbit was “enormously too large” in terms of relative size compared to the dragon.
So I decided to make them much bigger. Even more so because in my picture they are standing significantly closer to the viewer, so they appear bigger relative to the door.
I based my picture on that basic composition you see above and redrew it by hand. Here is my pencil line drawing.
Especially in the case of Gandalf I tried to make him as close as possible to Tolkien’s drawing, with his attire and even his posture (flipped from Tolkien’s original drawing), only adding more detail. But more about him later.
And I added other elements, some lightly sketched by Tolkien (the bench to the right) some implied by narrative or shown in the other drawings (a window to the left). I removed the tree from the position right above the door as it was shown in the Gandalf sketch, because other Tolkien’s drawings show a tree much farther away. And to be honest, the idea of a tree growing right above the burrow bothers me from a technical standpoint (just imagine those roots growing through the ceiling into the entryway).
Even though I try to stay faithful to Tolkien's depictions in general, I made some changes and introduced elements inspired by other depictions of Bag End, particularly by John Howe (who was also involved in the Peter Jackson films). Especially the small windows on the sides of the main door. I found it rather impractical to have no windows at the front hall, so I decided to add these even when I otherwise stay faithful to Tolkien's illustrations.
I also did a similar thing when I created my illustration of the hall at Bag End in 2021 which is mostly based on Tolkien’s front hall illustration.
Gandalf
One other reason that prompted me to draw this illustration was that I read about the appearance of Gandalf.
This may come as a shock to many Tolkien fans, but in the professor’s imagination Gandalf’s appearance was different from what we had previously thought.
While Gandalf is famously depicted with a full beard and moustache in films and most art, J.R.R. Tolkien’s later notes suggest that Gandalf actually had beard but no moustache.
In a note published in The Nature of Middle-earth Tolkien wrote:
“If I had known that Pauline Baynes was going to make a picture of Gandalf, I could have shown her a sketch I made long ago, showing him coming up the path to Bilbo’s hole with his (“battered”) blue hat more or less so. Or better: the picture from which my personal vision of him was largely derived. This is a picture postcard acquired years ago – probably in Switzerland. (...) He has a humorous but also compassionate expression – his mouth is visible and smiling because he has a white beard but no hair on his upper lip.”
He is referring to a painting Der Berggeist (’The mountain spirit’) by Josef Madlener. Humphrey Carpenter tells that he had the postcard in an envelope and on the back he wrote “origin of Gandalf.”.
Tolkien scholars have since discovered that he likely misremembered the origin of the postcard. Tolkien could not have acquired it during his visit to Switzerland (1911) because the painting was most likely not created until the 1920s. And the postcard featuring the painting was published much later, so it is likely that he acquired it only after he had conceived the story of The Hobbit (in the early 1930s, when he first told it to his children).
So, in reality, this cannot be the “origin of Gandalf”. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that Tolkien associated his vision of Gandalf with this very painting.
From the moment I read it, I was intrigued, so I decided to take on this challenge and bring out these details in Gandalf’s description, which almost no other artist has taken into account. Let’s take a look at how I did it.
