"You have this context which can be established from Tolkien’s sources which are more or less Dark Ages and earlier in Europe. Then building on that you have the emotions of the characters, what they feel, what their sentiments are, and that’s liberating"

From his home in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Canadian illustrator John Howe has become a visual gatekeeper for Middle-earth, starting with calendars and books, and then expanding into cinema with The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and currently with Prime Video series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

Becoming part of the fellowship of Oxford professor and fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien was not something that was preordained in elvish script or dwarven lore. “I grew up in an extremely rural environment with very little art available. I fell in love with Frank Frazetta’s artwork, which was only visible on paperback covers at the time. I would cycle around with a friend to every used bookshop that we could reach, pawing through stacks and stacks of musty paperbacks looking for Frazetta covers. Later, my pantheon expanded to include Barry Windsor-Smith, Bernie Wrightson, Michael Kaluta, and Jeff Jones, the quartet of self-styled Pre-Raphaelites of The Studio. I was also a great admirer of the French artist Gustave Doré, so you can imagine my delight when I ended up in his city of birth, Strasbourg, to attend art school.”

Artist

PROFILE

John Howe

Switzerland All of the symbolists, Pre-Raphaelites and golden age illustrators Watercolours and inks A Middle-earth Traveller (HarperCollins, Oct 2018), John Howe’s Ultimate Fantasy Art Academy (David &