A painting made in May 1928 of a serpentine dragon, with four claws and no wings, breathing fire toward a warrior who bears a spear and shield. The first known public display of the picture was as a slide shown in a lecture for children that J. R. R. Tolkien gave at the University Museum, Oxford, on Jan. 1, 1938, in which he associated the image with Beowulf's confrontation with the poem's dragon and suggested that the picture showed what "might be called 'the wrong way to do it.'" See Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995), 53. As Hammond and Scull observe, given the apparent mismatch of weaponry with the poem's account "the drawing may not have been meant originally as an illustration of Beowulf" (53).

The image has been reproduced, without color, in the 1976 catalog of an exhibition in which the painting was displayed (Catalogue of an Exhibition of Drawings by J. R. R. Tolkien at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 14th December-27th February, 1976-1977 and at the National Book League, 7 Albemarle Street, London W1, 2nd March-7th April, 1977). It then appeared in color in The J. R. R. Tolkien Calendar, 1979 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978); at original size in Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995), plate 49; and without color on the half-title page of Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell, by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995), 52-53.

Information in Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995), 53.