Monday, October 5, 2015

Hildebrandt's Shannara

According to Terry Brooks, part of the plan to make The Sword of Shannara into the next Lord of the Rings was to get the Brothers Hildenbrandt to do the book's artwork. They had done a successful Tolkien calendar in 1976 and editor Lester Del Rey told them to do the same style of pictures for Sword. They complied, producing a full color cover and fold out picture of the book's band of travelers, as well as several black and white images.


I included the two color paintings with my previous Sword post but I'll include them again.








Here are the rest.





Allanon at Shady Vale



Hendel and apple

Escape from Paranor

On the Walls of Tyrsis

Skull Mountain

Palance and Stenmin

The Sword of Shannara

2 comments:

  1. Very cool. I started reading these books in 5th grade, an ambitious undertaking inspired in no small part by the art and partially by the audacious undertaking of reading a 730 page book. Thanks for sharing this. The art was really a treat and added so much to the magical experience of this book. All Shanara books are so good. Especially the first 9.

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  2. Hello,
    I’m researching the original sources of the Brothers Hildebrandt illustrations for The Sword of Shannara.

    I have already been able to trace several of the higher-quality images online: some come from auction-house photographs of the original artwork, while others were reproduced in The Art of the Brothers Hildebrandt. However, I have not been able to identify the source of the higher-quality image of Hendel with the apple that appears in your 2015 post.

    Do you happen to remember where you obtained that particular image? Was it scanned from a book, taken from an old Hildebrandt website or archive, or found elsewhere online?

    I am trying to reconstruct the publication history of the complete illustrated apparatus as accurately as possible, so even a vague recollection would be extremely helpful.

    Thank you very much.

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