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Lot Essay
Fairy painting reached its zenith during the Victorian age. Painters and illustrators such as John Anster Fitzgerald, Sir Joseph Noel Paton, and Arthur Rackham provided pictorial escapism from the realities of an increasingly industrial age.
Naish was part of a second generation, experimenting with fairy subjects before turning his hand to landscapes. His extraordinary British Institution exhibit of 1856, Elves and Fairies: A Midsummer Night's Dream included a puck-like creature riding a moth; a similar boy sprite had also constituted the lone subject of Moon Fairies, a pair of oils executed in 1853 (see C. Wood, Fairies in Victorian Art, London, 2000, pp. 124-6).
Naish was part of a second generation, experimenting with fairy subjects before turning his hand to landscapes. His extraordinary British Institution exhibit of 1856, Elves and Fairies: A Midsummer Night's Dream included a puck-like creature riding a moth; a similar boy sprite had also constituted the lone subject of Moon Fairies, a pair of oils executed in 1853 (see C. Wood, Fairies in Victorian Art, London, 2000, pp. 124-6).