Title: Water Wind & Sand
Artist: J.R.R. Tolkien

1915

Tolkien painted this watercolour when he was a student at Exeter College, Oxford. He was inspired by a holiday he had taken the previous summer in Cornwall, walking along the wild coastline of the Lizard peninsula. The vivid colours and impressionistic style are typical of his artwork during this period when he attempted to capture feelings and abstract ideas in a sketchbook which he entitled, 'The Book of Ishness'.
Watercolour illustration by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1915. MS. Tolkien Drawings 87, fol. 20. Reproduced with kind permission of The Tolkien Estate Limited for the Bodleian Libraries exhibition Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth.

© The Tolkien Trust 1995.