Snark Hunting History

===== How I got into Snark hunting ===== In December 2008, I searched for “Hidden Faces” in the Wikipedia . I wanted to see whether an illustration by Henry Holiday (left) to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark was mentioned there. (Now it is.) But instead of that I found Gheeraert's Allegory of Iconoclasm (right, aka The Image Breakers ) in the Wikipedia article on hidden faces. And then I saw a little rhombic pattern in the “mouths” of the “heads” depicted in both illustrations. The Snark hunt had begun. left: 2009: Illustration by Henry Holiday to fit the eight in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (This is the 2007 version of an image in ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll/lewis/snark/#fit8 .) center: 2008-12-16: Detail from "Hidden Faces" in en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hidden_faces&oldid=258354510 right: Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, Allegory of Iconoclasm , c.1566–1568 etching 15” x 10.4”, British Museum, London. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gheerhaets_Allegory_iconoclasm.jpg (In December 2008 the image was smaller: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/f/f5/20100214083045!Gheerhaets_Allegory_iconoclasm.jpg , but even there you can see the detail which cought my attention.) (The blur is intentional. It removes unecessary details.)

Illustration by Henry Holiday to The Hunting of the Snark (1876) and The Image Breakers (1566-1568) by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder. This is the first comparison which I made between a Snark illustration by Henry Holiday and another image. A second discovery followed. That is how the Snark hunt started in December 2008. At that time my dealing with Holliday's illustration perhaps was a bit too playful and some matches marked in this comparison are questionable. But it was a good start, also thanks to some encouragement by the Canadian Indian German cryptomorphist Snark illustrator Mahendra Singh , who at that time already (but unknowingly) worked like Henry Holiday (even though he doesn't like Holiday's illustrations too much). The difference: Holiday never talked about his allusions. Singh does so quite openly. Both artists have in common, that they not only create illustrations, they also teach how to see . How did I run into the Snark ? The hunt is a kind of side effect of my work in work safety .

The Bellman (segment of an illustration by Henry Holliday to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark ) and a mirrored view of an unfinished portrait of Sir Henry Lee by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger Yes, the noses and the eyes are different. This is not a face comparison. In this case, Holiday's pictorial allusions refer to the surroundings of Lee's face, not to the face itself. As in several other cases, Holiday maintained the topological relation between the quoted shapes. Here the shapes are the nodes in two quite similar graphs. Holiday even "copied" the cracks in the varnish of Gheerert's painting.

513 · · He was black in the face, and they scarcely could trace 514 · · · · The least likeness to what he had been: 515 · · While so great was his fright that his waistcoat turned white- 516 · · · · A wonderful thing to be seen! This is probably one of the strongest examples for resemblances between graphical elements in Henry Holiday's illustrations (1876, cut by Joseph Swain) and graphical elements in another image. Sometimes Holiday mirrored his pictorial quotes: Here Holiday vertically flipped the "nose" of Gheeraert's "head". I flipped it back. 2011-12-12 2014-02-22 As for the image on the top of this page: [left]: The Banker after his encounter with the Bandersnatch, depicted in Henry Holiday's illustration (woodcut by Joseph Swain for block printing) to the chapter "The Banker's Fate" in Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" (scanned from an 1876 edition of the book) [right]: a redrawn and horizontally compressed and reproduction of "The Image Breakers" (1566-1568) aka "Allegory of Iconoclasm", an etching by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder (British Museum, Dept. of Print and Drawings, 1933.1.1..3, see also Edward Hodnett: Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, Utrecht 1971, pp. 25-29). Also I flipped the "nose" vertically. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Version, 2000x2000: www.ipernity.com/doc/goetzkluge/36260048

Illustrations by Henry Holiday (from The Hunting of the Snark ,1876) and Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder ( Allegory of Iconoclasts around 1567): In the "mouth" of Gheeraert's "head" a praying priest is depicted. The shape of the priest also is visible in the "mouth" of Holiday's vanishing "Baker". This is not plagiarism. This is a puzzle in a picture similar to puzzles in textual artwork (poetry,novels etc.), where readers are challenged to detect references to other writers. Holiday may have used the shape of the priest in his own illustration in order to indicate to the beholder a relation to Gheeraert's illustration. Holiday also used other elements from Gheeraert's etching in his own work.

My first Snark finding

Knight Letter (ISSN 0193-886X) of the LCSNA (Lewis Carroll Society of North America), Fall 2017, № 99 Details: snrk.de/knight-letter-links/kl-fall2017