The Last of the Unicorns

 

"There. There they are. They are mine! They belong to me!"
-- King Haggard, The Last Unicorn

This is where my lore started. The 80's animated film, "The Last Unicorn," featuring the voices of Christopher Lee, Alan Arkin, Angela Lansbury, Mia Farrow and Jeff Bridges, both enchanted and haunted me! It made my little eight-year-old heart hurt when the unicorns were captured by greedy humans... and made my heart swell when love and magic won out in the end. It left my childhood self ever searching for white mares and hoping they were unicorns. I can't make it past the opening song without crying... that first moment America starts to harmonize, that's it, the waterworks start! 

Reading the original novel "The Last Unicorn" by Peter S. Beagle, I appreciated the movie much more. The jokes, the side stories that seem unexplained... all is filled out much more in the short book, especially with Smendric the Magician and Prince Lir, there's more to their characters than the movie can portray. It's beautifully poetic how while in the story humans are physically capturing unicorns, the magic of unicorns emotionally captures those around them (and that is what in the end saves them.) 

Enchanted as I was, I just had to capture the unicorns myself... and paint them!

I searched for months for a vintage seascape to paint King Haggard’s castle on the cliff and hide unicorns  in the waves. This blue landscape had a nighttime feel, with waves that you could almost already see the unicorns in.

 

... and it was a BIG painting!

 

With this alteration, I wanted to capture that feeling King Haggard had when he looked on the unicorns he had the Red Bull capture for him. As I painted, I thought on the message that Peter Beagle was telling us in this fairytale... that humans have an insatiable desire to possess and control beautiful things. 

If you weren’t totally disturbed by the movie (as I hear a lot of people were when they were children!) I recommend reading the book… it adds so much depth to the characters and landscape, including the wonky castle! Apparently it was built by a witch, and when King Haggard refused to pay her for it (maybe because it didn’t look particularly up to code when it was done?) she cursed him and the castle and the nearby village. That is all left out of the films, but reading it does add a poetic justice to the end of the film when the curse is fulfilled. 

“There's nothing that I can look at for very long... except the sea.” —King Haggard

 

Peter Beagle created some wonderful characters that starkly showed different aspects of our human nature. The magical beauty of the unicorns caught King Haggard’s, and the way they responded was with selfishness and a desire to capture and own the unicorns. 

This made him a terrifying villain, because he was just a normal person... just an unhappy, selfish old man. Even though it was obviously very wrong, I can understand how when this old warrior King first saw unicorns, and glimpsed their shining and their grace, that he would be drawn to them. But then he crossed the line and wanted to have them for his own! Ultimately owning and collecting the unicorns didn’t make him happy… probably because deep down he knew it was wrong. 

 

King Haggard tells Lady Amalthea that there’s nothing he can look at for very long, except the sea, where he could watch his unicorns. I wanted to capture what he saw, and that feeling of happiness seeing the graceful, shining unicorns there… and enjoying their beauty in the waves like this I think that comes with a twinge of guilt, knowing that they are trapped. 

"Where were you when I was new? When I was one of those innocent young maidens you always come to?" --Molly Grue

 

But the unicorns also drew out the best in people… Mr Beagle describes the custom of maidens, when they came of age to go into the woods to sing to the unicorns… and if a unicorn came, they would pledge themselves to the unicorn and love and dote on it for the rest of their lives. 

“How dare you? How dare you come to me now... when I am this?” —Molly Grue

 

The character Molly Grue is probably my favourite character from The Last Unicorn… I always loved the scene when she first glimpses the unicorn, and is angry and upset that after all this time, after all the waiting and hoping, she finally sees a unicorn… when she is a middle aged woman, tired and disheartened, having given up hope of ever seeing a unicorn. I admit that it hits home more now that I’m also in my 40’s, having never seen a unicorn! But the magic of the unicorns renews and heals, and Molly quickly forgives… and quickly pledges herself to the last unicorn, to love and care for her in any way she can, just for the joy of being near her. What a beautiful example of selfless humanity. 

(When I came close to finishing the painting, I settled on 45 unicorns… because that’s how old I turned while painting the unicorns, it felt like a nice nod to Molly waiting all that time to see a real unicorn.)

The Red Bull gathered them for me one by one, and I bade him drive each one into the sea. Now they live there. And every tide carries them within an easy step of the land, but they dare not come out of the water. They are afraid of the Red Bull.” —King Haggard

 

A few people asked me to paint the Red Bull into the scene, but my idea behind this painting is to illustrate what King Haggard sees… to capture the unicorns in the waves. There’s a point in the story where the Lady Amalthea, who is a unicorn transformed into a human, has started to forget she was ever a unicorn. So even she does not see the unicorns in the waves. It takes a keen, watchful eye, to spot the unicorns in the waves. 

"I must have them! I must have all of them, all there are! For nothing makes me happy... but their shining and their grace.” —King Haggard

 

I spent the better part of a month working on this painting... and it was such a beautiful experience, fulfilling that childhood desire to see unicorns shining in the waves.