jmd
I thought I would wait until others had a chance to have a look at Jensen's book on The Story of the Waite-Smith Tarot before posting this, but at the same time, not wait toooo long, as I may otherwise plain forget all about it, given it is not a deck I use much at all.
On page 121, Frank Jensen shows two early images from different publications of the Sun card in outline (no colour), depicting with, I will suggest, different degrees of accuracy Pamela Colman Smith's actual picture.
It is indeed a pity that, thus far, the originals drawn have not been located. Personally, I suspect they have not been destroyed (though that too is possible, especially given the vast destruction that occured in both world wars, especially the second).
What is fascinating with the earlier image is a careful look at the numbering. For someone like myself that habitually uses a Marseille-type deck and its cognates, the numbering is not 'wrong' (as seen by Frank Jensen), but rather mistakenly re-rendered for the publication, the transposer incorrectly assuming that the fourth 'I' was part of a squiggly line.
If anything, it most likely shows that the original uses the additive Roman form (XVIIII) and that this was later changed to the subtractive form (XIX), with the already mis-read fourth 'I' as squiggle remaining as inexplicable line.
The image of the two renditions, the first from the Occult Review in 1909, and the second from Waite's 1910-1911 Pictorial Key to the Tarot, is attached below (and also uploaded on my fourhares.com site for those unable to see the attachment).
On page 121, Frank Jensen shows two early images from different publications of the Sun card in outline (no colour), depicting with, I will suggest, different degrees of accuracy Pamela Colman Smith's actual picture.
It is indeed a pity that, thus far, the originals drawn have not been located. Personally, I suspect they have not been destroyed (though that too is possible, especially given the vast destruction that occured in both world wars, especially the second).
What is fascinating with the earlier image is a careful look at the numbering. For someone like myself that habitually uses a Marseille-type deck and its cognates, the numbering is not 'wrong' (as seen by Frank Jensen), but rather mistakenly re-rendered for the publication, the transposer incorrectly assuming that the fourth 'I' was part of a squiggly line.
If anything, it most likely shows that the original uses the additive Roman form (XVIIII) and that this was later changed to the subtractive form (XIX), with the already mis-read fourth 'I' as squiggle remaining as inexplicable line.
The image of the two renditions, the first from the Occult Review in 1909, and the second from Waite's 1910-1911 Pictorial Key to the Tarot, is attached below (and also uploaded on my fourhares.com site for those unable to see the attachment).