Fairies in Victorian Art

The golden age of fairy painting lasted between 1840-1870 when fairies found expression in most of the Victorian arts - paintings, illustration, literature, theatre, ballet and music. The Victorians wanted desperately to believe in fairies because they represented a way to escape the intolerable reality of living in an unromantic, materialistic and scientific age. Fairy painting had a strong literary background. The books of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen perfected the Victorian consciousness. The works of Shakespeare were an even more important source, in particular The Tempest and A Midsummer Night\'s Dream. Another influence was the Victorian obsession with the supernatural, spiritualism and the unseen world. It was in this atmosphere that Fairy painting flourished. Between the artist and his public there was a zone of common ground, an area of escapism in which both sides were prepared to believe, and in which it was permissible to depict the subconscious, the erotic and the Victorian interest in opiates. The work of the great fairy painters is examined - Dadd, Paton, Fitzgerald and Richard Doyle - along with that of other Victorian painters like Landseer, Fuseli, Millais, Rossetti and Rackham.