Wonderful thread,
Esty, and interesting posts so far on the other one, everybody! Unfortunately I've got to admit I've never read the Father Christmas Letters, only seen the pictures reproduced in
JRRT: Artist & Illustrator, so I'm limited to commenting on these and any additional pics you may post.
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Originally Posted by Esty
What do you think is the significance of FC's move to a new home?
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IIRC the Tolkien Family moved from Leeds to Oxford in 1925, so the children would have been able to sympathize with Father Christmas. Or the other way round: the story echoes the children's own experience and shows them the same can happen to the most exalted persons, which would have comforted them, if they were upset by moving house.
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Originally Posted by Esty
Why is the North Pole patched in red - just so that it will show, or do you think there could be some significance to that detail?
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Isn't it obvious? They took the red from the star on the right in the upper picture (which "went red when pole snapped") and used it to patch the pole, which is why the star is yellow again in the lower one.
What I love in these pictures is the clarity of a few luminous colours offset by the white of snow/paper and black ink - creates a very wintery, frosty-clear atmosphere which fits the arctic setting very well.
By the way, some of the elements in these pictures resurface from earlier drawings by Tolkien. Hammond & Scull point out that something very like the inverted icicles/minor north poles* can be seen on the 1915 watercolour
Tanaqui - it seems he just liked the shape, and it certainly adds something mysterious to a landscape. FC's round house, on the other hand, looks very similar to the building on an untitled pencil drawing from 1914.
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*immanent explanation for these: the Earth's axis shifts through Earth history, doesn't it?, and so does the North Pole. Maybe these are past and future North Poles, some eroded and some not yet grown to full height.