User:Goetzkluge

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

left: Illustration by Henry Holiday to The Vanishing in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876),
right: Etching The Image Breakers by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder (c. 1567)

1 Snark
2 Other articles
- 2.1 External sites

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Snark

Low pass filtered detail from image on the right side of this page. The segment from Holiday's illustration is displayed in mirror view.)

Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark was illustrated by Henry Holiday. In December 2008 I accidentally discovered, that Henry Holiday quoted from the etching The Image Breakers (or Allegory of Iconoclasm, c. 1566-1568) by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder. A very unique pattern in the "mouth" of both "heads" convinced me, that Holiday took reference to Gheeraert's etching. That is how http://holiday.snrk.de/ started.

Holiday was not a plagiarist. He just masterfully quoted graphical shapes from works of other artists like, as an example, Tom Stoppard quotes from other writers. Thus, Holiday's puzzles parallel Carroll's cunundrums. As for Lewis Carroll, I assume, that The Hunting of the Snark is about belief and legitimate disputes (Snark) as well as about violent fanaticism (Boojum), especially with regard to the history of Anglicanism.

Left: Henry Holiday's depiction of the Baker's uncle (in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, 1876) with some of the Baker's 42 boxes outside of the window.
Right top: John Everett Milais: Christ in the House of his Parents (aka The Carpenter's Shop, 1850, Pre-Raphaelite) with a flock of sheep outside of the window symbolizing the the laity).
Right bottom: Edward VI and the Pope: An Allegory of Reformation (mirrored view, 16^th century) with a violent scene of the reformation depicted outside of the window. Thomas Cranmer is second from left under the window.

I think, Millais quoted from the 16^th century painting: The red flower in Millais' window corresponds to a mutilated body visible through window in the 16^th century painting. And Holiday (who perhaps understood Millais' quotes) quoted from Millais' painting as well as from the 16^th century painting.

Discussion: flickr

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Questions

With regard to Image:DarwinHunting480.jpg, was it possible, that Carroll and/or Holiday had access to Darwin's famous "I think"-sketch of the evolutionary tree already before Darwin's notebook was made available to a wider public? (I got contradicting answers from Darwin specialists.)

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