The Mill

The Mill may refer to:

Shire (Middle-earth)

The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire refers to an area settled exclusively by Hobbits and largely removed from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is located in the northwest of the continent, in the large region of Eriador and the Kingdom of Arnor. Its name in Westron was Sûza "Shire" or Sûzat "The Shire". Its name in Sindarin was i Drann.

Geography

According to Tolkien, the Shire measured 40 leagues (193 km, 120 miles) from the Far Downs in the west to the Brandywine Bridge in the east, and 50 leagues (241 km, 150 miles) from the northern moors to the marshes in the south. This is confirmed in an essay by Tolkien on translating The Lord of the Rings, where he describes the Shire as having an area of 18,000 square miles (47,000 km²).

The original territory of the Shire was bounded on the east by the Baranduin River, on the north by uplands rising to the old centre of Arnor, on the west by the White Downs, and on the south by marshland south of the River Shirebourn. After the original settlement, hobbits also expanded to the east into Buckland between the Baranduin and the Old Forest, and (much later) to the west into the Westmarch between the White Downs and the Tower Hills.

The Mill (Burne-Jones painting)

The Mill is an Aesthetic Movement, Renaissance-inspired oil on canvas painting completed by Edward Burne-Jones in 1882. It is a mysterious painting with no particular meaning. The painting's main feature is three women dancing in front of a mill pond on a summer evening, with a vague wooded landscape spanning the background. The Mill is currently in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Background

Edward Burne-Jones took twelve years to complete The Mill, starting work in 1870 and completing it in 1882. Shortly after its completion, the painting was displayed at an exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery.The Mill was inspired by The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, a mural painted by Italian Renaissance artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti between 1338 and 1340.

Painting

The Mill is an oil on canvas painting. It is 91 centimetres (36 in) in height, and 197 centimetres (78 in) in width.

The Mill is a vague and mysterious painting with no particular meaning. It incorporates styles from the Aesthetic Movement and the Renaissance. In the painting, three women wearing simple, Renaissance-style aesthetic dresses are dancing in a garden on a summer evening. On the right of the dancing women, a musician of an indiscernible gender is standing under a loggia. A mill pond can be seen behind the women. On the other side of the pond, there are several nude men, who are presumably swimming. In the background is an unspecific landscape consisting of various designs and types of architecture.