One intriguing aspect of Blok's career is that he showed five of his paintings to Tolkien back in the early 1960s, and Tolkien admired them enough to buy two of them (as editor Pieter Collier explains in the foreword to A Tolkien Tapestry). These were "The Battle of the Hornburg" and a version of "The Dead Marshes." In writing to Blok and requesting to buy the paintings, Tolkien remarked, "I think it is very kind of you to consider selling any of your pictures. If they were mine I should not be able to bear to part with them whether in need or not." (This 1962 letter is reproduced on p. 6 of the book.) Blok gave Tolkien a third painting, "Dunharrow," as a present. These are all still in the Tolkien family or with the Estate.

Interestingly, Tolkien found the paintings appealing specifically as paintings. He wrote to his editor, Rayner Unwin, "I thought them most attractive … I should very much like to see some more, in the hope that some more will be as good as 'The Battle of the Hornburg.' The other four I thought were attractive as pictures, but bad as illustrations." (Quoted p. 6 of A Tolkien Tapestry.)

During his talk, Blok mentioned that he had lost track of the whereabouts of some of his paintings. In the early 1990s, Blok loaned a group of them to an exhibition. A dealer then sold them as a lot to a single collector.

After that collector's death, however, the heirs wanted to dispose of the paintings. Without notifying Blok, between roughly 1994 and 2005, the same dealer sold the collection, this time one or two paintings at a time. He did not keep track of the contact information for the people who purchased them.

Blok is interested in obtaining that information. I should stress that the paintings were sold quite legally, and he is not seeking to re-acquire them. He simply wants to know who has them, in case someone might wish to mount an exhibition of his work. Most of these sales probably involved collectors in the Netherlands and Belgium, though of course the paintings might have been re-sold again and gone to other countries.

Here's a list of the paintings, with the page numbers from A Tolkien Tapestry for the ones that appear in the book. Roman numerals refer to paintings of which more than one version was created. The titles in bold type are ones Blok is particularly interested in tracing:

"The Game of Riddles" (p. 59)

"Gandalf persuades Bilbo to leave the Ring to Frodo" (p. 53)

"Weathertop" (p. 76)

"The Balrog II" (p. 92)

"Frodo's Vision on Amon Hen" (pp. 100-101)

"Isengard" (p. 115)

"Gollum's Promise" (p. 121)

"The Forbidden Pool" (p. 128)

"The Cross-roads" (p. 129)

"Sam Attacks Shelob" (p. 132)

"The Stone of Erech" (p. 135)

"The Dead Marshes I"

"Orodruin"

The ones I saw at "Return of the Ring" were very high in quality and should appeal to those who can't afford originals or have missed the opportunity to acquire their favorite. The only disadvantage of the prints is that they cannot reproduce the unique textured paper used in the paintings.

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