Tolkien (J.R.R.).- Gordon (Eric Valentine) Bust portrait of J.R.R. Tolkien, looking to his left, pencil, 1924.

 

Tolkien (J.R.R.).- Gordon (Eric Valentine, Canadian philologist, worked alongside Tolkien on various scholastic works, 1896-1938) Bust portrait of J.R.R. Tolkien, looking to his left, pencil, signed lower left, inscribed underneath 'Professor John Ronald Tolkien/ Leeds University 1924', with ink stamp 'Leeds/ University' in the lower right corner, on cream wove paper without watermark, sheet 360 x 270 mm (14 1/8 x 10 5/8 in), under glass, pasted at edges into original card mount, mount window 305 x 205 mm (12 x 8 1/8 in), some minor surface dirt and light browning, a few small surface nicks, in original oak frame, 1924.

Provenance:
Private collection, UK

*** The only non-photographic portrait of J. R. R. Tolkien drawn in his lifetime.

After Tolkien was discharged from military service in 1919, he took up his first academic post as Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds, becoming the youngest member of academic staff at 28. During this early period of his academic life, Tolkien devoted himself to the study of medieval philology, and found friendship with a fellow enthusiast in the department, Eric Valentine Gordon. After Gordon arrived at Leeds, Tolkienwrote in his diary, "Eric Valentine Gordon has come and got firmly established and is my devoted friend and pal" (Carpenter p.111). Alongside the cornerstones of academic works he produced, namely A Middle English Vocabulary, Tolkien co-edited with Gordon a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which was published in 1925, a work that remains the standard definitive edition to this day.

Gordon and Tolkien's shared passion led them to found the Viking Club, whose meetings were characterised by members drinking and singing songs they'd written in Old English and Norse. They remained close until Gordon's untimely death in 1938, and two works to which Tolkien contributed, were published posthumously byIda, Gordon's wife and a fellow philologist. The first wasPearl(1953; Tolkien contributed to this book with a section, "Form and Purpose" in the introduction), and the second wasThe Seafarer(1960). A week after his death, Tolkien wrote to his widow expressing his grief over the death of his friend: "I have never been quite so happy since Leeds and the parting (too far) of our ways".

A unique and extraordinary early fragment of Tolkien's life before his Lord of the Rings fame.

Refences: Humphrey Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, New York, Houghton Mifflin.

The iconic photographic portrait,commissioned by Tolkien's students circa 1925/6,relates very closely, although not exactly, to the 1924 portrait, which Gordon would likely have been involved with, or at least, certainly aware of.