Simon Bartholomew

The Hildebrandt Brothers (Greg and Tim Hildebrandt) were key fantasy artists who strongly influenced how the public imagined The Lord of the Rings before the films. In the mid-1970s, they were selected by Ballantine Books to illustrate official Tolkien calendars (1976, 1977, and 1978), which achieved wide circulation and offered some of the first popular visual representations of Middle-earth. 📆🧝‍♂️ Although they did not directly illustrate the books by J. R. R. Tolkien, their images helped establish a recognizable iconography of The Lord of the Rings in popular culture prior to the films. Years later, this body of work was compiled in volumes such as The Tolkien Years, cementing their place in the history of fantasy art. 🗡️🧙🏻‍♂️