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Museum-Quality Matte Paper Print available in two sizes:
12" x 16" (30cm x 40cm): $35.00
24" x 32" (60cm x 80cm): $48.00
 
“And then there was the Shire-folk. I began to have a warm place in my heart for them in the Long Winter, which none of you can remember.” - Gandalf in "The Quest of Erebor", Unfinished Tales
 
This original, hand-done painting gives a rare glimpse of one of the great hobbit legends: the coming of the wandering wizard into the Shire in a time of great suffering. Nearly 200 years before the well-known events of The Hobbit, a dreadful season of storms and famine struck Eriador and a few short lines reveal the sad news of the merry, lovely hobbits starving. 
 
In his wisdom, Gandalf intuits that the Little Folk must be saved and so he comes to their aid, helping many to survive. This episode may be read as one of the first recorded times that Gandalf is an exemplar of vital pity and mercy amongst the hobbits, and the fact that the event was remembered long enough to end up in their lore books makes it rather like the tales of folk heroes. Gandalf wasn’t just remembered for his fireworks - he was memorialized as a figure of rescue in dark days. 
 
Not unlike Beowulf or J.R.R. Tolkien’s King Sheave, the Maia’s eucatastrophic arrival amongst the hobbits has some interesting echoes of culture bringer mythology, particularly if we suppose that the aid he brings to the starving hobbits would include food such as sacks of grain. Professor Tom Shippey’s Signum University lecture on Beowulf is well worth listening to if you’d like to learn more about names like “King Sheave” from a great scholar. Meanwhile, things to notice in this painting of the Long Winter in Shire Reckoning 1158 include:
 
A party of desperate hobbit hunters is out in the snow with their bows and arrows. The hobbits have a long tradition of archery.
I have imagined the scene taking place at the eaves of Woodhall.
In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf famously arrives at Bag End in a cart, but given the fierce weather conditions, I supposed he would have needed a sleigh. I can’t say where he might have gotten one from, but we might imagine he borrowed one from a worthy friend like Tom Bombadil in the Old Forest, or perhaps he hired a conveyance in Bree.
The sleigh is brimming with sacks of provisions and the hungry hobbits cautiously come out from amongst the trees to meet this incredible, unlooked-for sight. The hobbit who has cast back his hood may well be a Baggins ancestor.
Gandalf’s sleigh bears aloft two torches on G-rune-shaped staves. Their bright light may be seen as a token of his service to the Secret Fire. The hobbits’ tiny torches twinkle back in answer, just as their hearts will one day do in the era of their great adventures with Gandalf.
A raven and a thrush perch in the bare branches. Can you think what their presence foreshadows?
 
If you bring home a print of this painting, I sincerely wish it to be a sign of hope in your dwelling that dark seasons pass and that unlooked-for help sometimes arrives just when you least expect it. This is an important moment in hobbit history, a root of the theme of pity and mercy which one day help save Middle-earth. It is worth celebrating!