Status of Original Painting – For Sale

All prices are in Canadian dollars

Size: 11.25 x 20  inches

Price: Inquire

Medium: Watercolour on 300 lb Arches

Description:

Tolkien’s hobbits in Newfoundland? That’s what this painting suggested to me. But it couldn’t be Bilbo’s home in Bag End, because page one of The Hobbit describes that it has a perfectly round green door with a brass knob in the middle, and that’s how it was depicted in the films. This must the home of a less well off hobbit in the Shire , perhaps that notorious uncle that no one wants to talk about or invite to parties.

No hobbits live here though. This is one of the reported 135 root cellars in Elliston, the Newfoundland community featured in my last painting, “Iceberg in Elliston.” Elliston claims to be the “Root Cellar Capital of the World” and its hillsides are dotted with little doors like this one. Root cellars preceded the modern refrigerators for keeping vegetables, fruits, and other produce cool in summer and from freezing during winter. They also were a location for kids and teenagers to hide out or play in, which may also explain the curious local folklore that root cellars are where babies came from, especially one root cellar in particular. Maybe that’s where many babies were made!

But I still wish there were hobbits living in those burrows.

My thanks to Beth Kirby who took the reference photo upon which I based this painting.