Of the many Arthurs that inhabit our collective imagination, the one illustrated by the Swedish American illustrator Gustaf Tenggren are unique. Figures seem sculpted more than they are drawn. They are depicted not as if they had ever lived, but as if they had been posed on a stage.
As they have, on the stages of our collective imagination, for the last 1200 years or so.
The figures share pictorial DNA with those of Burne Jones. They are beautiful, stylized figures set against grim landscapes.
Shockingly grim, at times.
Tenggren was an interesting fellow, having risen through the ranks of the Disney industry before transitioning to book illustrations.
When he wasn’t doing scenes from the Arthur mythos, he had a side gig: illustrating some of the more successful Golden Key titles.
However much I admire his depictions of Arthur, the truth is that Tenggren will be remembered by most for his depictions of a very different iconic figure:
The Poky Little Puppy is, in fact, the best selling children’s book of all time.
Tenggren’s Arthur is the same Arthur that Thomas Malory wrote about in his aptly named Le Morte D’Arthur.
At the end of Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur, after the final battle with the great enemy, nearly all of Arthur’s knights are dead, bodies strewn across the battlefield.
Arthur lies dying on the field, in the arms of his last remaining knights, Sir Lucan and Sir Bedevere. He hears people crying across the battlefield.
“Now go thou, Sir Lucan,” said the king, “and do me to wit what betokens that noise in the field.”
So Sir Lucan departed, for he was grevously wounded in many places. And so as he yede, he saw and hearkened by the moonlight, how the pillers and robbers were comen into the field, to pill and to rob many a full noble knight of brooches, of beads, of many a good ring, and many a rich jewel; and those who were not dead all out, there they slew them for their harness and their riches.
This is apocalypse: the end of Camelot, the end of the Round Table, the end of the ideal of chivalry.
Malory’s death of Arthur is a bitter rebuttal of those playful, frivolous Arthurian romances of the 12th and 13th centuries. Malory was (most likely) a veteran of the bloody Wars of the Roses, writing from jail, having been prosecuted as a thief, bandit, kidnapper, and rapist. The tone of his book is one of anger, resentment at the destruction of an ideal of nobility, in history and literature.
Arthur lies dying on the field, in the arms of his last remaining knights, Sir Lucan and Sir Bedevere. He hears people crying across the battlefield.
“Now go thou, Sir Lucan,” said the king, “and do me to wit what betokens that noise in the field.”
So Sir Lucan departed, for he was grevously wounded in many places. And so as he yede, he saw and hearkened by the moonlight, how the pillers and robbers were comen into the field, to pill and to rob many a full noble knight of brooches, of beads, of many a good ring, and many a rich jewel; and those who were not dead all out, there they slew them for their harness and their riches.
This is apocalypse: the end of Camelot, the end of the Round Table, the end of the ideal of chivalry.
Malory’s death of Arthur is a bitter rebuttal of those playful, frivolous Arthurian romances of the 12th and 13th centuries. Malory was (most likely) a veteran of the bloody Wars of the Roses, writing from jail, having been prosecuted as a thief, bandit, kidnapper, and rapist. The tone of his book is one of anger, resentment at the destruction of an ideal of nobility, in history and literature.
There’s a bit of this tone in Tenggren’s depiction of Arthur’s world. It’s difficult to reconcile these images with his work on Disney’s Snow White, Bambi, and Fantasia.
Not to mention The Pokey Little Puppy.