A fascination with fairies and the supernatural was a phenomenon of the Victorian age and resulted in a distinctive strand of art depicting fairy subjects drawn from myth and legend and particularly from Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Early, pre-Victorian examples are in Fuseli, Blake and Von Holst. Other contributions came from many painters [...]
A fascination with fairies and the supernatural was a phenomenon of the Victorian age and resulted in a distinctive strand of art depicting fairy subjects drawn from myth and legend and particularly from Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Early, pre-Victorian examples are in Fuseli, Blake and Von Holst. Other contributions came from many painters including Landseer and even Turner. It reached its apogee in the illustrated books of Arthur Rackham in the period 1900-14.