Fairies in Victorian Art
Christopher Wood’s Fairies in Victorian Art examines the Golden Age of Fairy Painting (c. 1840-1870), when fairies began to feature across the Victorian art world, appearing in paintings, illustrations, literature, theatre, ballet and music. In an era of industrialisation and scientific exploration, the Victorian public embraced the Fairy world as a means of escape to a more romantic age. The Brothers Grimm and Hands Christian Andersen’s collections of fairy tales provided a wealth of inspiration, as did Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The popularity of Spiritualism also lent meaning to the art. This period of Fairy art was strictly an adult interest, allowing as it did artists to portray taboo subjects including nudity and eroticism. It was only during the late 19th Century that Fairies began to be relegated to the nursery.
Artists in the book include John Anster ‘Fairy’ Fitzgerald, Richard Doyle, Joseph Noel Patton, John Atkinson Grimshaw and many others who touched on the subject of Fairies over their career. Later illustrators like the great Arthur Rackham also feature. It is worth buying this book for the illustrations alone, printed in full colour and many full page, but the accompanying text make very interesting reading too.
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