Smaug Flies Around the Lonely Mountain This is probably the earliest of four pictures of Smaug flying around the mountain, and is an untitled ink drawing with an elaborate sky. It appears to be set in daylight, though in The Hobbit Smaug flies only at night. The dragon is black against the mountainside, as is the front gate and Ravenhill on the south-west spur. At the bend of the river are the remains of the old bridge that Bilbo and the dwarves cross in chapter 13 (‘most of its stones were now only boulders in the shallow noisy stream’)

Photograph: JRR Tolkien, courtesy of the Tolkien estate