1951. Original artwork from the Chronicles of Narnia comprising the artist's "most famous work" Published within C. S. Lewis's second volume in the Chronicles of Narnia series, Prince Caspian, on page 62. The illustration is from Chapter 5 ("Caspian's Adventure in the Mountains"), in which Trufflehunter the badger offers Prince Caspian a drink, watched by the two dwarfs, Nikabrik and Trumpkin. "'I shall give it a drink,' said the first voice... A dark shape approached the bed... The shape somehow seemed wrong. The face that bent towards him seemed wrong too. He got the impression that it was very hairy and very long nosed, and there were odd white patches on each side of it... A cupful of something sweet and hot was set to his lips and he drank. At that moment one of the others poked the fire. A blaze sprang up and Caspian almost screamed with the shock as the sudden light revealed the face that was looking into his own. It was not a man's face but a badger's, though larger and friendlier and more intelligent than the face of any badger he had seen before... He saw, too, that he was on a bed of heather, in a cave. By the fire sat two little bearded men, so much wilder and shorter and hairier and thicker than Doctor Cornelius that he knew them at once for real Dwarfs, ancient Dwarfs with not a drop of human blood in their veins". In 1948 Pauline Baynes (1922-2008) was commissioned by Tolkien's publishers to provide illustrations for the author's Farmer Giles of Ham. Tolkien was delighted with the illustrations and wrote "I showed them to my friends whose polite comment was that they reduced my text to a commentary on the drawings" (Scull & Hammond, p. 112). Baynes became "Tolkien's illustrator of choice" (Scull & Hammond, p. 112), and she later worked on The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wootton Major and a number of Tolkien's posthumous works. It was the collaboration between Tolkien and Baynes that led to her introduction to C. S. Lewis. As described by Scull & Hammond, "her most famous work... is her art for the seven volumes of the Chronicles of Narnia". When later asked how she came to be chosen as the illustrator of Narnia, Baynes responded: "Lewis told me that he had actually gone into a bookshop and asked the assistant there if she could recommend someone who could draw children and animals. I don't know whether he was just being kind to me and making me feel that I was more important than I was or whether he'd simply heard about me from his friend Tolkien". Walter Hooper notes that Baynes and Lewis "were to meet several times to discuss the illustrations, and there seems unanimous agreement that the choice of an illustrator for Narnia was perfect" (Hooper, p. 406). When The Last Battle won the Carnegie Medal for the best children's book of 1956, Baynes wrote to congratulate Lewis. He responded by asking "is it not rather 'our' Medal? I'm sure the illustrations were taken into consideration as well as the text" (Hooper, p. 408). Original drawing (50 x 102 mm) on card (318 x 193 mm). Drawn in ink, signed in pencil lower left ("Pauline Baynes"), captions and printer's markings below mount. Mounted. Light consistent toning, corrections in gouache, crease to card not affecting image: fine and unfaded.
