The Paintings That Framed Agatha Christie

Over the last century, dozens of artists have illustrated covers for Agatha Christie’s books. An area that has not been deeply studied is the extent to which known artworks were integrated into these covers along with thoughts as to why they were chosen.  While many artistic styles have influenced her cover illustrators over the years, there are a number of covers that are almost pastiches of famous artworks that were already in public consciousness.

A Pair of Examples 80 Years Apart.

The use of known art spans the history of Christie’s covers. A recent example is the trade paperback of The Secret Adversary (2019) published by Penguin Random House whose cover art that was clearly sourced from an original drawing by Winsor McCay created for his landmark animated film The Sinking of the Lusitania in 1918.

I appreciate that an iconic image that was created close to the time Christie was writing the novel and the actual disaster was selected for this novel. It creates a connection that enriches the cover once you know.

An earlier example, The Moving Finger, published by Dodd Mead & Co in 1942 had cover art created by Henry Koerner. It was an almost exact reproduction of a war-time poster created within the prior year by Frederick Siebel.

Given America's then recent entry into World War II and the wide distribution this poster had in the States, the image was certainly well recognised by the American market and a clever choice for the novel.

In a future article, I'll likely explore other covers from across the decades that have been pastiched by cover artists. As this is a new area of study, if you are aware of covers that are direct pastiches of known art, please email me at collectchristie@gmail.com . It is highly likely that I am unaware of many of them.

The Tom Adams Ten.

For this article I am focusing on original art integrated by Tom Adams, who created over 100 covers for Agatha Christie’s books during his career. These were mostly created for Fontana paperbacks published from 1963 until 1980. For the American market, he created 26 covers in the 1970s for Pocket Books. He also created three covers for hardbacks published by HarperCollins in the 2010s.

Most of his work was created through various techniques ranging from still life scenes that he photographed in his studio to designs driven by collaging techniques. For more details and insights into his creative process, please refer to prior articles I've written on his work and creative processes (link).

Among his many covers, Adams had at least eight covers that were pastiches of known art works, beyond those that were more loosely influenced by the style of noted artists.  In this article, I explore the ten well-known paintings that directly influenced these eight Christie covers and how their selection sheds light on his creative process. It is possible I've missed a few so as mentioned above do reach out to me if you are aware of a specific painting integrated into one of his covers.

1965: The Mysterious Mr. Quin.

This Fontana paperback (No. 1050) was influenced by The Faithful Colt, painted by William Michael Harnett in 1890. Tom Adams likely drew inspiration from this painting as he worked to master the trompe l'oeil ("trick of the eye") technique, which became a signature of his cover art. By using this style, he was able to achieve several artistic and thematic goals for this cover.  Like Harnett, who painted physical objects with precise detail, Adams also preferred painting from real-life props. For this painting he borrowed a gun from a friend and hung it on a nail, just as Harnett had done. He then took a studio photograph of the montage to assist as he created the painting. Both the gun and the moth serve as metaphors for death, but also the balance between life and death. The use of an insect became a common theme across many Adams’ covers which included this moth, flies, a wasp and a butterfly.

Harnett's The Faithful Colt (1890) is part of the permanent collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. While often part of their American collection display, it is not guaranteed to be on view at all times.

1965: The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side.

This Fontana paperback (No. 1077) was inspired by The Lady of Shalott painted by John William Waterhouse, R.A., in 1894. It is important to note that there are three very different versions of this painting by Waterhouse. The one painting most are familiar with shows her seated in a boat (1888), the second has her turning from a mirror upon noticing the arrival of Lancelot (1894), and the third has her sitting in a tower in a red dress (1915).  It is the second version that Adams used for inspiration whose complete title is The Lady of Shalott Looking at Lancelot.

The choice of this painting to inspire his cover is suitable on a number of levels. First, the title of the book is inspired by Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott. Within this poem, just as the Lady of Shalott's mirror cracks when she confronts a reality she is forbidden to see, Christie’s novel centers on a frozen moment where the protagonist, actress Marina Gregg, sees someone from her past. This sight triggers a realisation behind a tragedy and death that mirrors the poem's narrative. Adams’ decision to use this image of the Lady turning from the mirror and blending it with the broken glass and blood-shot eye conveys the psychological weight of the visual revelation at the heart of the mystery. In addition, the Pre-Raphaelite style of the painting matches the glamorous yet fading world of the film star Marina Gregg.

To view The Lady of Shalott you can visit the Falmouth Museum, as Tom Adams did when creating this cover. However, they only have a draft version of the painting (above left). Alternatively, you could visit Leeds Art Gallery to whom Waterhouse gifted the original in 1895 (above centre). Tom Adams visited this gallery when he revisited the cover for the larger painting created as part of the Sammer Gallery series in 2004.

1975: The Murder at the Vicarage.

This Fontana paperback (No. 3995) was heavily inspired by Le Fils de L’Homme [The Son of Man] by Rene Magritte, painted in 1964. Tom Adams’ choice to draw inspiration from this painting was a clever piece of surrealist commentary that perfectly suited the narrative of the book. Magritte’s apple hides the face of the man, suggesting that what is visible often masks an underlying, hidden truth. By using that symbolism on the cover, Adams is telling us that Christie’s novel features other hidden truths and questionable identities.

The painting is privately owned and rarely exhibited. It was last seen publicly at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art in 2018.

1976: Cards on the Table.

This Fontana paperback (No. 4313) integrated elements of The Cheat, painted by John Collier in 1905.  As you can observe, the hands and mouths of the card players in Collier’s painting become the key elements in Adams cover. Unlike typical portraits, Collier’s painting tells a story, featuring four figures in a high-stakes moment of confrontation often interpreted as a depiction of betrayal. While Collier was a respected portraitist, in this painting he uses facial expressions and body language to create a compelling, theatrical scene. The painting serves as a window into the underlying anxiety regarding honesty and reputation in society card games of that era. This ties in perfectly with Christie’s novel on so many levels.

Adams’ decision to remove the people and just leave the ‘tells’ is extremely clever because it removes the awareness of who the cheat is that Collier had left in his image. With all four of Christie’s suspects focused on their cards, claiming to have seen nothing, Poirot is able to conduct the investigation by analyzing through psychological methods much as a poker player today uses ‘tells’ to assess their opponents.

The Cheat is  believed to be privately held and has not appeared in a public display since the early 1900s.

1978: Elephants Can Remember.

This Fontana paperback (No. 5036) was directly influenced by two well-known paintings. The first is There’s No Place Like Home by Sir Edwin Landseer, painted in 1843. The second was The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt, painted in 1854. Together with a studio photograph of a wig, Tom Adams merged these images together to create a complex piece of art for this Christie novel.

Landseer was considered the most famous animal painter of 19th‑century Britain, with an ability to convey deep human emotion through animals, a hallmark of Victorian art. The image of the pleading dog symbolises themes of home, belonging, and vulnerability that strongly resonated with 19th‑century audiences, especially during the social hardships of the 1840s.

Adams’ choice of this painting was very clever beyond the direct implication that this is the Ravenscrofts’ dog in the novel (bearer of an important clue) as the dog also embodies devoted attachment to home and family which makes its moment of aggression in the novel more memorable. That emotional shock is precisely why witnesses never forgot it, and why it endures as a key clue years later. This makes the painting a strong visual metaphor for the novel, where characters are hungry for the truth about a long‑ago death and must rely on lingering memories to fill in what time has erased.

The second painting that influenced Adams’ cover was one of his personal favourites. Hunt’s The Scapegoat is a landmark work of Victorian religious art and a striking example of Hunt’s commitment to spiritual symbolism combined with uncompromising realism. While Adams’ removes the goat (the biblical one that was saved from sacrifice and cast into the wilderness), he does keep Hunt’s salt‑encrusted shore of the Dead Sea. This was a landscape Hunt had chosen for its desolation & bleakness. This imagery works for the book as the landscape looks like a place where the past doesn’t heal, which is perfect for a murder in retrospect story filled with regret and dread.

Landseer's painting can be viewed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Hunt's painting can be viewed at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight (Liverpool). A smaller, preliminary version is also on view at the Manchester Art Gallery.

1978: A Caribbean Mystery.

This Fontana paperback (No. 5359) was also influenced heavily by two well-known paintings. The first is Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais, painted in 1851. The second is Le Rêve [The Dream] painted by Henri Rousseau in 1910.

Millais’s Pre‑Raphaelite masterpiece depicts the moment in Shakespeare’s Hamlet when Ophelia, driven mad by grief, floats in a river just before she drowns. Millais used the Hogsmill river in Surrey for the scenery while his Ophelia was actually modelled by Elizabeth Siddal, who floated in a bathtub in his London studio – notoriously becoming very ill after doing so.

Adams’ decision to use this painting on his cover for A Caribbean Mystery works very well in a variety of ways. The painting has a haunting balance between beauty and tragedy while also portraying themes and a clue to the astute art lover about the dead body in the water.  While it is obvious that Millais didn’t actually paint the real Ophelia, the clue it imbodies is the reality that the dead body is actually Ms. Siddal – a different person but someone who was important in her own right to the artistic community of the day.

The Dream by Rousseau was also an excellent choice to blend into the cover for this book. While the original painting depicts a nude woman reclining on a sofa in the midst of a lush, moonlit jungle filled with exotic plants and animals, Rousseau explained that the woman is dreaming she has been transported from her Paris interior into this tropical forest. Adams’ choice to integrate elements of this painting into his cover are effective on several levels. First, the setting visually communicates the novel’s core ideas that paradise is not innocence and tranquility is not safety. Secondly, Rousseau’s moonlight setting aligns with the nighttime search in the novel that turns up the body in the creek. Third, and lastly, the moon’s shape allows Adams to integrate Major Palgrave’s eye, an image that connects this new cover with his original cover from 1967. Adams also revisited this cover as part of his Sammer Gallery series.

Millais’s painting can be viewed at the Tate Britain.

Rousseau’s painting can be viewed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

1985: The Veiled Lady & The Third Floor Flat (Audio).

The vinyl sleeve for the 1985 Caedmon audio book of The Veiled Lady & The Third Floor Flat was a pastiche of Richard Dadd’s 1853 painting titled Portrait of a Young Man.

Adams' Untitled portrait of Agatha Christie on a bench was originally painted in the late-1970s and was first used as the cover of Randall Toye’s The Agatha Christie Who’s Who. The painting was subsequently lost by Collins’ Canadian office though images of it remained. The artwork first appeared on an Agatha Christie work when it was used as the album cover for the aforementioned 1985 audio book collection published by Caedmon (US).

Adams’ decision to use this portrait to influence his own version is creative when one considers that Dadd was an inmate at Bethlem Hospital (commonly referred to as Bedlam) where he was held after being declared criminally insane. Dadd’s painting was done in the prison gardens, which are represented in the foliage behind the character. In art circles, the work is appreciated for its portrayal of calm despite the reality of its setting in an insane asylum. Given Christie’s murder and mayhem in her writings, the juxtaposition of her in the same setting is a unique and creative choice by Adams.

2016: The Mysterious Affair at Styles & Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case.

This box set created to commemorate 100 years since Christie penned The Mysterious Affair at Styles featured two hardback books published by HarperCollins. Each had new cover art by Tom Adams that represented the beginning and ending of Poirot’s legacy across Christie’s canon. One painting that influenced one of the core design elements was Kerze [Candle] by Gerhard Richter, painted in 1982.

Adams’ decision to use Kerze is significant as the painting acts as a reflection on the fleeting nature of life and a meditative contemplation of death, which is highly suitable given the narrative of Curtain. Richter used a blurred technique to make the paintings look photographic, exploring how images can represent our perception of reality. This aligns perfectly with Tom Adams’ career where his skill at trompe l’oeil became a defining style of his many covers. 

There are a number of candle paintings by Richter. While the 1982 Kerze (Candle) is held in a private collection Zwei Kerzen (Two Candles, 1982) is displayed at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art.

Other News.

Events: I will be attending the Murder, She Wrote Festival in Mendocino, California from May 1-3, 2026. If any readers are also attending do let me know. It would be great to say hi and connect.

Later this year, I'm presenting at the 2026 International Agatha Christie Festival on 'Roger Ackroyd Day' - September 17th 2026 - in Torquay, Devon, England. My talk celebrates the centenary of this ground-breaking mystery novel voted the best crime novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Assocation. My illustrated talk will bring fresh insights into the story's life - from print to stage to screen. Individual tickets are still available. Full details & tickets at this link.

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I always value reader input to make my articles more accurate. So if there are any additions or corrections you'd like to provide, please email me at collectchristie@gmail.com 

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