Everything about Fairy Painting totally explained
Fairy painting is a genre of
painting and
illustration featuring
fairies and
fairy tale settings, often with extreme attention to detail. The genre is most closely associated with the
Victorian era in
Great Britain, but has experienced a contemporary revival. Moreover, fairy painting was also seen as escapism for Victorians.
Origins and influences
Despite its whimsical appearance, fairy painting is strongly rooted in the literary and theatrical influences of
Romanticism, as well as in the cultural issues facing the Victorian era. Among the most significant of these influences were the fantasy themes of
Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's Dream and
The Tempest. Other literary works, such as
Edmund Spenser's
The Faerie Queene and
Alexander Pope's
mock-heroic The Rape of the Lock have been cited as contributing influences as well. Innovations in stage production helped bring these works to the public eye, as the development of
gaslight and improvements in wire-work led to increasingly elaborate special effects. Although once described by
Douglas Jerrold as "a fairy creation that could only be acted by fairies", productions of
A Midsummer Night's Dream became more common, eventually leading to an 1863 spectacle featuring
Ellen Terry as Titania astride a mechanical mushroom.
Cultural changes were also an important factor during this period. Continuing
industrialization was uprooting longstanding traditions, and rapid advances in science and technology, especially the invention of
photography, left some people discomforted and confused. According to Jeremy Maas, the turn to mythological and fantasy elements, and in particular to the fairy's world, allowed an escape from these demands. "No other type of painting concentrates so many of the opposing elements of the Victorian psyche: the desire to escape the drear hardships of daily existence; the stirrings of new attitudes toward sex, stifled by religious dogma; a passion for the unseen; the birth of psychoanalysis; the latent revulsion against the exactitude of the new invention of photography." The significance of fairy paintings as a reaction to cultural change isn't universally accepted, however. "Ultimately," Andrew Stuttaford wrote, "these paintings were just about fun."
Victorian fairy painting
The earliest artists considered to have contributed to the genre predate much of Romanticism and the Victorian era.
Henry Fuseli and
William Blake produced works that would be indicative of the later genre even before
1800. However, the artist most closely associated with fairy painting was
outsider artist Richard Dadd, a suspected
schizophrenic who produced most of his work while incarcerated in the
Bethlem psychiatric hospital for the murder of his father. Despite his status and condition, his fantastic subjects and extraordinarily detailed style were generally well-received, with one period reviewer describing his work as "exquisitely ideal". He accompanied his masterpiece,
The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, with an elaborate poem providing historical, literary, or mythological context to each of the characters depicted.
Fairy painting wasn't exclusively the domain of outside art, however. The work of
John Anster Fitzgerald debuted at London's
Royal Academy. His work, in the form a series of Christmas-themed fairy illustrations, received wider public visibility in the
Illustrated London News. The Scottish artist
Joseph Noel Paton exhibited two immensely detailed paintings based on the popular fairy scenes of
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Even
Edwin Landseer, sometimes named "
Victoria's favourite artist", produced a painting of
Titania and
Bottom in the genre's style.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, another of the Brotherhood's initial members, took a more sensual approach to the subject, in both painting and poetry. Others involved with the movement, such as
Arthur Hughes and
William Bell Scott, also contributed to the genre.
Although the
Cottingley Fairies briefly revived interest in fae subjects, the waning of Romanticism and the advent of
World War I reduced interest in the styles and topics popular during the Victorian era. The illustrated fairy-tale books of
Arthur Rackham are considered its "final flowering".
Modern revival
The interest in
fantasy art and
literature since the 1970s has seen a revival in the topics and styles of Victorian fairy painting, often in novel contexts. While artists such as
Stephanie Pui-Mun Law have produced genre illustrations for book covers and
role-playing games, the works of
Brian Froud, also known for a series of illustrated fairy books, have been adapted into several successful motion pictures including
The Dark Crystal and
Labyrinth. A 2003 book,
The Art of Faery, written by
David Riche and mentored by Froud, contributed to the careers of twenty fairy artists of this revival movement, including
Amy Brown,
Myrea Pettit,
Jasmine Becket-Griffith,
James Browne, and
Jessica Galbreth, many of whom went on to author individual art books. Depictions of fae have made their way into the popular culture in other ways as well, including clothing designs, ceramics, figurines, needlecraft, figurative art, quilting, many marketed through
Hot Topic to an international market online.
Renaissance fairs and
science fiction conventions have also developed modern fairy art as a genre of
collectibles.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Fairy Painting'.
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