Dragon by Theodor Severin Kittelsen (Interpretation and Analysis)

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Dragon (1892)
Source: WikiArt

October is the season of monsters. No Halloween celebration would be complete without guests dressed as vampires, mummies, and werewolves. However, my favorite monster is something a little larger and more fiery: a dragon.

Fortunately, there is one artist who celebrates mythological creatures in all their glory: Theodor Severin Kittelsen. Kittelsen—a Norwegian artist—is well-known today for his paintings and drawings representing Scandinavian legends and fairy tales. His style is charming and whimsical, imbued with the spiritual and emotional fervor of the Romantic movement.

Well, Kittelsen is especially well known for his drawings and paintings of Norwegian trolls, he also produced many illustrations of dragons throughout his career. The painting I’m featuring today depicts the skeleton of a dragon, made even more fearsome and terrifying in death. The desiccated corpse lays in a shadowed cave, surrounded by scattered pieces of gold and treasure, decorated with traditional Scandinavian designs. Ominously, a human skull also rests near the dragon’s head, a reminder of the dragon’s strength and might in life.

Kittelsen’s style recalls the illustrations that graced the storybooks and novels that many of us read as children. It is a highly effective approach for storytelling, capturing the narrative elements in a soft color scheme and whimsical detail. Personally, this painting reminds me of a scene from C. S. Lewis's novel the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In the book, one of the characters encounters the cave of a dead dragon and steals one of the pieces of his treasure. The treasure turns him into a dragon in turn, a curse that takes the character quite a while to break.

If nothing else, this lovely illustration by Theodor Kittelsen reminds us all not to steal from dragons, dead or alive!

Disclaimer: I’m not an art historian or an expert on this topic. The above is my opinion, based on my interpretation of my foreknowledge of art and history. If I’ve done any additional research, I’ll note it above.

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