Sea-Longing in the Family: Tuor, Idril, and Eärendil

J.R.R. Tolkien's story of Eärendil's heritage is calling to me like the sea this year. In this new painting, you see him in his youth, sitting with his parents, Idril and Tuor, on a great rock at the Havens of Sirion, looking across the water towards the West. Tuor, whom I have recently depicted in his own young days is now a fully mature figure, and this is a family which has been through so much! It is little wonder that the sea-longing comes over this trio, given what they have lived through.

Ancient Idril knows what is beyond the horizon. She crossed the Grinding Ice during the rebellion of the elves, and she lost her mother on that dread journey. Tuor's formative years have been filled with loss, thralldom, and lone wanderings until his meeting with Ulmo. Though he has never been to Valinor, he has seen a Vala face-to-face. The couple has managed to escape with their son from the Fall of Gondolin, and they have been living in hiding around the mouths of the Sirion ever since, but a high doom awaits them all.

In fascinating exception to the Ban of the Valar, Idril will be welcomed back to the Blessed Realm, leaving behind her son and her green jewel. Tuor, alone among mortal men, will be given the status of the Eldar there. Considering all that these two beings have endured, I find it very consoling to think of the healing and help that awaited them.

It was a pleasure to paint Idril for the first time, an elf-mother full of wisdom and love. In the distance, we glimpse something of the havens, and gulls symbolize the the great sea-longing that can come to both elves and Men. In this painting, the easternmost sky is dark with the turmoil in Beleriand, but brightens as the free, full clouds flow west. The sea is beautiful and full of every hue of blue and green and lavender, but the waves are hard and sharp, almost like glass obstacles, blocking the way to Aman. Yet the waves lap at the feet of this family, as if wanting to pull them westward. Having spent all my life just a stone's throw from the Pacific, I have sat like this on big rocks time and again, marveling at the water, the freshness, the inspiration of the sea. There is a wonderful passage in The Silmarillion I'd like to share today:

"And it is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance else that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen."

I think Idril would have known in her day, and I wonder how she might have tried to communicate this to her beloved family. What did she teach them?

Whatever it was, when Eärendil sets his course, he is sailing towards his father and mother, with her emerald - the original Elessar - on his breast. Did Eärendil find his parents when he was welcomed to Valinor by the elves there who came to greet him with gifts of harps and songs, as is told in Bilbo's poem? I very much hope so!

Professor Tolkien had a special feeling for the sea. Once, it brought him home to England, almost beyond hope, from the battlefields of Europe. What do we humans seek today when we flock to the seashore? What do we hear in the music of the tides?

I hope you will spend a moment with this video short, imagining to yourself how it would feel to come upon three such marvelous figures upon the rocks. I hope you get some sense of the sea-longing as you watch and consider.