Pauline Baynes

When J.R.R. Tolkien's publishers sent him a portfolio by a young artist they thought suitable to illustrate his story Farmer Giles of Ham, Tolkien as a medievalist was attracted by some pastiches she had done of medieval manuscript illustrations. She was commissioned for the job on that basis, and it's great to read the famously grouchy Tolkien crowing with delight at the result:

I am pleased with them beyond even the expectations aroused by the first examples. They are more than illustrations, they are a collateral theme. I showed them to my friends [this would be the Inklings] whose polite comment was that they reduced my text to a commentary on the drawings. (Letter no. 120)

He was right, and today I'd find it impossible to imagine Tolkien's mock-medieval story without the equally humorous mock-medieval illuminations by Pauline Baynes.

Baynes went on to illustrate more Tolkien books, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Smith of Wootton Major, and prepared a map of Middle-earth, and, after the author's death, made an illustrated book out of his short poem Bilbo's Last Song. She would even have been commissioned to illustrate The Lord of the Rings had there been room in the publishing budget for it; how about that? She was a lifelong friend of the Tolkien family. Tolkien recommended her to C.S. Lewis and she illustrated the entire Chronicles of Narnia. And she illustrated a lot of other things.

She died a few days ago at the age of 85. Her art will live on. Farmer Giles in particular is marvelous, simply marvelous.