Bellman & Bard after retinex filtering

[main image]: John Martin: The Bard (ca. 1817), by GIMP: contrast enhanced in the rock area & light areas delated & (most of) color removed & retinex filtering

[upper inset]: Detail from preperatory draft for Henry Holiday's illustration (1876) to chapter The Beaver's Lesson in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark

[lower inset]: Henry Holiday: Illustration (1876) to chapter The Beaver's Lesson in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, detail

It seems, that initially Henry Holiday saw anthropomorphic "faces" in John Martin's rocks and used them in his draft. However, Holiday's final allusion to this part of John Martin's painting is different - and funnier.

As the for The Bard, the final Bellman comes closer to that figure than the drafted Bellman.

=== Literature ===

In mydailyartdisplay.wordpress.com/the-bard-by-john-martin, "Jonathan" connects the painting to the poem The Bard written by by Thomas Gray in 1755. Inspired by a Welsh tradition that said that Edward I had put to death any bards he found, to extinguish Welsh culture; the poem depicts the escape of a single bard:
· · ...
· · On a rock, whose haughty brow
· · Frowns o'er cold Conway's foaming flood,
· · Robed in the sable garb of woe
· · With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
· · ...
· · A Voice, as of the Cherub-Choir,
· · Gales from blooming Eden bear;
· · And distant warblings lessen on my ear,
· · That lost in long futurity expire.
· · Fond impious Man, think'st thou, yon sanguine cloud,
· · Rais'd by thy breath, has quench'd the Orb of day?
· · To-morrow he repairs the golden flood,
· · And warms the nations with redoubled ray.
· · "Enough for me: With joy I see
· · The different doom our Fates assign.
· · Be thine Despair, and scept'red Care,
· · To triumph, and to die, are mine."
· · He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height
· · Deep in the roaring tide he plung'd to endless night.
· · ...

Full text:
www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=bapo
spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?action=GET&tex...
www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/gray.bard.html
www.google.com/search?q="A+Voice,+as+of+the+Cherub-Choir"

The poem and the painting may have been an inspiration to Lewis Carroll and Henry Holiday in The Hunting of the Snark. This is about The Vanishing of The Baker:
· · 537 · · "There is Thingumbob shouting!" the Bellman said,
· · 538 · · · · "He is shouting like mad, only hark!
· · 539 · · He is waving his hands, he is wagging his head,
· · 540 · · · · He has certainly found a Snark!"

· · 541 · · They gazed in delight, while the Butcher exclaimed
· · 542 · · · · "He was always a desperate wag!"
· · 543 · · They beheld him--their Baker--their hero unnamed--
· · 544 · · · · On the top of a neighbouring crag.

· · 545 · · Erect and sublime, for one moment of time.
· · 546 · · · · In the next, that wild figure they saw
· · 547 · · (As if stung by a spasm) plunge into a chasm,
· · 548 · · · · While they waited and listened in awe.

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