Butcher, Beaver and Mary Throckmorton Lady Scudamore

What you see here is a segment from an illustration by Henry Holiday to The Hunting of the Snark and a portrait of Mary Throckmorton Lady Scudamor by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. Here Holiday's creativity and playing with zoomorphism gave life to a skarf. There is more:

 

    285    But the Butcher turned nervous, and dressed himself fine,

    286        With yellow kid gloves and a ruff--

    287    Said he felt it exactly like going to dine,

    288        Which the Bellman declared was all "stuff."

 

Literary reference in pictures is what you expect from an illustration to a poem. The colouring of the gloves I added to Henry Holiday's illustration (image on the left side) based on Lewis Carroll's poem. The Beaver's color I just guessed ;-)

 

Holiday could not use colour. But he could refer to a painting where yellow gloves caught the attention of the beholder. This is a pictorial reference. I don't know, what came first: Carroll's text or Holiday's idea to take reference to Gheeraert's painting. It is known, that the Dodgson (Carroll) and Holiday mutually inspired each other when they were working on their Snark project.

 

Henry Holiday made most of his arts business with quite customer friendly stained glass windows. That was honest craftsmanship. (Some of the windows I also like.) But something must have been boiling in him: When illustrating Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, he allowed himself to go a bit crazy. He hid his "graphical quotes" from other artists well; yet he was not a plagiarist, as he left clear and detectable traces. The result of his Snark work are beautiful conundrums and witty graphical puns.

 

Done