Was in training all week. I saw Jack Vance's Dying Earth series brought up. Since Gary claims Vance as a bigger influence on D&D than Tolkien (though I take his denials of Tolkien's influence with big grain of salt), it is interesting to consider how Wizards are depicted in Vances works. In short, the depictions are all over the map. Well, at least for MALE magic users. Sorceresses/witches tend to be quite sexulized in the Dying Earth Series.
Note that the Dying Earth books seem to describe a strong gender division among Magic users. Perhaps the in-world explanation is that this is that this is due to the War of the Wizards and Witches (which the witches won BTW, leading Llorio to rule as basically a goddess for an epoch) and Sorceress Llorio, also known as the Murthe, who travelled back through time, turning famous wizards from that time into women. She is referred to as a sorceress. The use of "sorceress" just seems to be a gender difference. Wizards in Dying Earth are also alternatively referred to as "sorcerers" or "magicians". The Master Magicians and Great Witches rivaled each other in power, so I don't think the terms point to any D&D-style class difference, other than being gender-based terms for magic users.
In
Rhialto the Marvellous, the fourth book of Vance's Dying Earth series, there are a lot of wizard characters. Their descriptions are all over the place. Unlike the Wizard protagonists of the earlier books, the Wizards in the association of Wizards whose exploits are told in this book have god-like power. These are the 4th-tier PC wizards if comparing to D&D. Except, they don't appear to be hindered by the same spell-memorization limitations described in the earlier books. Maybe they just have a lot of spell slots. Maybe their powers have increased beyond "Vancian magic" limitations.
The titular Rhialto is described as a slim man with short black hair and austere features, who wears ostentatious, ornate clothing and is popular with women.
Rhialto on the cover of the French edition:
Descriptions of other wizards of the association include "portly, bald middle-aged man with blue eyes and blond whiskers, which he habitually tugs at when vexed" (Ildefonse); "short and squat with a great puff of white hair" (Barbanikos); "affects an appearance which is, from head to toe, half-white and half-black, split vertically down the center" (Eshmiel); "wears the appearance of a nature-god with fine features and bronze curls" (Hache-Moncour); "appears as a wisp, an aquatic humanoid with green skin and orange willow-leaves for hair" (Haze of Wheary Water); "a small man with large gray eyes in a round gray face, always attired in rose-red garments" (Gilgad); "robust of body with long brown hair and a flowing beard" (Zilifant); "whose iron fingernails and toenails are engraved with curious signs" (Zahoulik-Khuntze), etc.
See Foreward, Vance, Jack. Rhialto the Marvellous (The Dying Earth series Book 4) . Tor Publishing Group. Kindle Edition; also
Rhialto the Marvellous - Wikipedia.
One of my favorite depictions of a wizard from the Dying Earth setting is from George Barr's cover art for the '76 printing of Dying Earth.
The cover of the original paperback of the first book,
Dying Earth, depicts a female caster. I don't know who it is supposed to depict. I'm guessing one of witches encountered in the story:
Some of my favorite art of characters from the Dying Earth books:
Fanart of sorcerer Pharesm from
Cudgel the Clever. "Up the trail came a man of imposing stature wearing a voluminous white robe. His countenance was benign; his hair was like yellow down; his eyes were turned upward as if rapt in the contemplation of an ineffable sublimity. His arms were sedately folded, and he moved without motion of his legs."
Illustration for Jack Vance's Tales of the Dying Earth by Dark Prince Skye / Skye Sken / Heikki Kuusipalo.
www.skyesken.org
By Tom Kidd. "Mazirian feeding the carnivorous plants he created in his lab right before T'sain lures him away. From the 2013 Subterranean Press edition."
Dying Earth by Jack Vance: Mazirian in his Garden, in Arrik Un Rama's Jack Vance Comic Art Gallery Room
Dying Earth by Jack Vance: Turjan in his lab. Published in the 2013 Subterranean Press edition.
Illustration for the story
Abrizonde, in Songs of the Dying Earth.
Illustration for
The Lamentably Comical Tragedy of Lixal Laqavee, same book.
Illustration from
The Return of the Fire Witch