The Painting

MrBob

MrBob

Well-known member
I always wondered where Eustace's mother got the painting of the Dawn Treader. Is it ever revealed or is it just an enigma to be pondered.

MrBob
 
hmm, never thought bout that! lol but i'm sure she prolly got it at like a yard sale...j/k! haha idk where she got it...but it's bothering me now! lol thanks...! anyways...welcome to TDL pm meanytime if u need something!

Polly
 
That's a good question; maybe Aslan turned the painting (when Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace are looking at it) into a Narnian painting, then changed it back normally. Or, maybe to the Pevensies, it would always remind them of Narnia and Aslan.
 
Aslan changing the painting would be neat. From what is told of Eustace's parents, _they_ might have put up a framed photograph of some ugly steam freighter, which Aslan then changed to the Dawn Treader.


Joseph Ravitts, author of "Southward the Tigers: a Tale in the Days of King Frank" (Prof.'s Writing Club)
 
MrBob said:
I always wondered where Eustace's mother got the painting of the Dawn Treader. Is it ever revealed or is it just an enigma to be pondered.

MrBob
Click to expand...


it said in the book that it was a wedding gift from someone alberta didn't like. i think that it was normal before but Aslan did something to it.
 
I think it's an enigma, though it's got potential for speculation. I don't think it was ever anything but the Dawn Treader (remember, Eustace was obviously familiar with it when he was taunting Edmund and Lucy about it). However, there might have been some connection with Narnia in the family. Remember, the Pevensie parents (who we never meet) were related to the Scrubb family somehow. There also may have been a connection between Professor Kirke and the Pevensies, either that of family friend or somehow related*. If true, that would mean there could have been at least a distant connection between Professor Kirke and the Scrubbs.

If you let your speculator run wild, you might be able to envision a network of interesting people, influenced by Narnia without knowing what they were influenced by or why, branching out from the enigmatic Professor Kirke and the kindly but slightly mysterious Miss Plummer. Oooh, *shudder* - my imagination could run wild. Even now, images flash across my mind:

  • a lonely clerk whose attention to his bookwork keeps getting distracted by the wild and mysterious piping that keeps running through his head. When he mentions it to the only person he trusts, his old tutor, the soft-spoken professor simply smiles....
  • a talented young painter, confused and lonely amidst the wild and decadent London artistic scene of 1920s, finds comfort in a mysterious but kindly middle-aged spinster whom she meets occasionally for tea. Encouraged by the gentle woman, the girl bucks the cultural tide and begins painting what she really wishes to: the colorful, curious images of pastoral landscapes populated with mythical creatures, towering castles, and colorful sailing ships that keep showing up in her dreams...
  • a cockney cleaning girl who still misses the only people who ever cared for her - a beloved aunt and uncle who mysteriously disappeared years before - is hired by that same middle-aged spinster whose house is filled with images of animals and other strange creatures. Particularly fascinating is the wooden statue of a flying horse on a mantel...
  • a college student whose fascination with the creatures of classical mythology is encouraged by his tutor, and who has a passing encounter with a brash, somewhat abrasive young Irish student named Jack...

What potential!


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*The movie gives the impression that there was no connection between Professor Kirke and the children other than just random selection of them to be housed at his home in the country. The book doesn't support this - it simply says the children were sent to the house. In fact, Dawn Treader implies that there was a stronger connection, since Peter was going to be tutored by Professor Kirke even after he'd left the old house.
 
It does make one wonder where it came from doesn't it. Regardless, I bet the character of Eustace would have treasured it from the minute he got back from Narnia till the day he died.

I always imagine what happened with the "friends of Narnia" between the end of the Silver Chair and the start of The Last Battle. Did Eustace, Ed and Lucy show that painting to Peter, Jill, Digory, and Polly later? What was it like when they all met each other? What happened to the painting after The Last Battle? So many things to ponder for fun....:)
 
I wonder thought, those are good concluses but remeber the Dawn Treader had to be built so Aslan turning the painting in to it wouldn't happen till it was compleatly built. I think A Narnian would have given the painting to Alberta thinking that she would like it, or maybe they thought it was such a lovely painting that they just had to give it to her and it didn't have ties to Narnia till Ed and Lu came to the house and reconized it. I mean they did call it a " Picture of Narnia" but also in the Horse and his Boy they had they Narnian ship " The Splinder Haylen" So of course if it was really a Narnian ship would atamaticaly reconinzed by the way it was built. So the Aslan swaping the painting into a Narnian looking ship is Logical and good.
 
Welcome, MrBob, I didn't see you post before.

I like PoTW's idea that somehow Professor Kirke, the Pevensies and (thus) the Scrubbs were all related. So the Narnian influence, athough it could not be much felt in the Scrubb household, nevertheless leaked in, through the picture.
 
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