A review by secrethistory
The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien by Wayne G. Hammond, J.R.R. Tolkien, Christina Scull

4.0

This book is so close to being perfect. It's a beautiful art book filled with what I believe is every found piece of art Tolkien made for The Hobbit. I learned a lot about Tolkien--I didn't even know The Hobbit had illustrations (though since starting this I picked up a copy with some of them), or that Tolkien was a fairly talented artist. He's strongest with landscapes and towns, but not very good with human figures, as he'd be the first to admit. I was extremely impressed with all of the more finished pieces.

Yes, just the more finished pieces, and that is what stops the book from being perfect for me. The Art of The Hobbit is extremely in depth, and includes some pieces of paper Tolkien barely sketched on. These pictures left me yawning, honestly, and I didn't find them worth reproducing for entertainment purposes. For the Tolkien scholars amongst his fans, I'm sure these are extremely interesting and important, but for me they simply weren't.

This truly lovely art book has, in addition to gorgeous full color reproductions of Tolkien's art, context and textual comparisons between different stages of the artwork, which I found extremely interesting. It's good fun to see the art progress, but I was really pleased to read about why Tolkien made some of the changes he did. Besides a few somewhat boring bits, I found this book to be wonderful. I would recommend it to any fan of Tolkien, and especially to the more serious ones looking for drafts of his art.