These paintings date from the same period (1927-8) as the paintings and drawings illustrating The Silmarillion. Beneath the coiled dragon at the top appear in the original some words from the Old English poem Beowulf (line 2561): hringbogan heorte gefysed, rendered in J. R. R. Tolkien's translation of the poem 'The heart of the coiling beast was stirred'. The three dragons were published in The J. R. R. Tolkien Calendar 1979, but the uppermost (in colour) and the warrior contending with a dragon (uncoloured) were used to illustrate the catalogue of the exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the National Book League, London, in 1976-7, and the former, as an embossed design in red, silver, and gold, appears on the cover of the De Luxe edition of The Hobbit (1976).