<P> The original painting was auctioned at Sotheby's in London on 12 July 2005 for £ 84,000 . The previous owner had been given the painting by Madlener in the 1940s and recalled that Madlener said the mountains in the background were the Torri del Vaiolet peaks in the Dolomites . </P> <P> When writing The Hobbit in the early 1930s Tolkien gave the name Gandalf to the leader of the Dwarves, the character later called Thorin Oakenshield . The name is taken from the same source as all the other Dwarf names (save Balin) in The Hobbit: the "Catalogue of Dwarves" in the Völuspá . The Old Norse name Gandalfr incorporates the words gandr meaning "wand", "staff" or (especially in compounds) "magic" and álfr "elf". The name Gandalf is found in at least one more place in Norse myth, in the semi-historical Heimskringla, which briefly describes Gandalf Alfgeirsson, a legendary Norse king from Eastern Norway and rival of Halfdan the Black . Gandalf is also the name of a Norse sea - king in Ibsen's second play The Burial Mound . </P> <P> The name "Gandolf" occurs as a character in William Morris' 1896 fantasy novel The Well at the World's End . Morris' book is a four - part story set in a pseudo-medieval landscape which is known to have deeply influenced Tolkien . </P> <P> The wizard that became Gandalf was originally named Bladorthin . Tolkien later assigned this name to an ancient king who had ordered some spears from the dwarves . </P>

When does gandalf return as the white wizard