Joe Gargery tells Pip the story of his unhappy childhood and the lessons he deduced from it.
Well THIS is a BIG Picture. At the time I created it, it was the biggest Illustration I've ever attempted. It's more than a single Illustration; in fact, these are seven scenes connected into one big composition.
First, what are we even seeing? We look right into Pip's and Joe's face out of the chimney in the parlour. The flames in the foreground serve as backdrop for individual scenes from Joe's childhood.
Starting from the upper left Joe's drunkard father is depicted crying after having turned upside down -metaforically and literally- a glass of strong liquor.
In the flame below his father quarrels with his wife pushes his son away, who tried in vane to help his mother.
In the next scene, going anti-clockwise, Joe's mother and himself are fleeing from their unhappy home.
On the bottom left, Joe's father seeks to force them back to their home.
Above we can see the death of Joe's father, while Joe lovingly bends down to him.
And in the final vignette we can see Joe's wish of forging an epitaph saying:"Whatsume'er the failings on his part, Remember reader he were that good in his heart."
The little scenes are heavily inspired by famous work of arts. Some of the garments are rather in place in a biblical or renessaince setting.
I was to lazy to draw the geometry of the parlour, so I drowned the rest of the room in a deep blackness. It was a rather too strong contrast to the highly detailed scenes in the flames and it served me as a memorial not to completely paint major parts of the drawing in black.
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