The mystery of 'The Picture in the Bedroom'. Chapter 1 of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

'It was the only picture in the house that they liked. Aunt Alberta didn't like it at all [...] but she couldn't get rid of it because it had been a wedding present from someone she did not want to offend.'

Eustace and Lucy feel that: "... She is such a very Narnia ship".

It got me thinking. And the more I thought about it, the more questions kept coming. Probably even more than I've managed to mention here.

As a wedding present, presumably Alberta would have had the picture over ten years. This was well before even the Pevensies knew of Narnia. According to the timeline this story sets place in 1942. Had Aslan really set the wheels in motion all that time ago? This painting appearing so that one day it would end up in a room in Eustace's house. But also banking on a Narnian voyage that would require him and the two younger Pevensies. Where do you suppose the painting was bought? Seemingly somewhere the provenance was unknown, perhaps dropped in some kind of junk shop (but then would this someone have got it from such a place?) Is there more to this someone? It's not difficult to imagine Aslan working it that the painting appeared one day and the shop owners or whoever just imagining they'd previously overlooked it. Perhaps the picture looked more of a regular our-world ship and gradually over time certain details changed, which only the children noticed as Alberta tended to avoid it or only give it a cursory glance.

Sometimes you're not supposed to dwell on such things too much in a children's book... but I couldn't help but muse over it :D. I'm really curious what others' might have thought about this before, if at all?