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Lot Essay
"'Fairy Fitzgerald'...was an artist who will probably be more appreciated in time to come than he is in his own lifetime", wrote Aaron Watson in The Savage Club, 1907 (from J. Maas, Victorian Fairy Painting London, 1997, p. 17). Today, Watson's prediction has proved true as John Anster Fitzgerald is recognized for his whimsical paintings of fairy banquets, dances and funerals rather than the portraits and illustrations by which he made his living.
A uniquely British tradition, fairy painting began in the late eighteenth century with artists like William Blake and Henry Fuseli who imaginatively illustrated the work of Shakespeare, particularly his more fanciful plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. Fitzgerald, however, departed from this literary tradition and instead created his own genre of fairy painting based on folklore and legends. Among Fitzgerald's influences were the writings of Thomas Crofton Croker and Thomas Keightley that retold the oral and supposedly documentary accounts of, among other subjects, fairy funerals. A popular subject at the time, fairy funerals seem to have occupied the thoughts of not only Croker, Keightly and Fitzgerald, but Blake as well, who purported to have witnessed one in his own backyard (C. Gere, 'In Fairy Land', Victorian Fairy Painting, London, 1997, p. 63).
In The Death of the Fairy Queen, a weightless white-clad fairy floats above her grave on a delicate green leaf while the fanciful figures and creatures surrounding her bow their heads in grief. The painting's vibrant, jewel-like tones are characteristic of Fitzgerald's work and suggestive of an opium-induced state in which colors are intensified and hallucinations abound (Maas, p. 19). The strangeness of Fitzgerald's scenes may also derive from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, which the British artist may likely have seen from prints (Mass, p. 18), and transformed from nightmarish images into charming vignettes of fantastical whimsey. Whether drawing from Bosch, Croker or his own rich imagination, the work of Fairy Fitzgerald formed a playful counter to restrained Victorian society.
A uniquely British tradition, fairy painting began in the late eighteenth century with artists like William Blake and Henry Fuseli who imaginatively illustrated the work of Shakespeare, particularly his more fanciful plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. Fitzgerald, however, departed from this literary tradition and instead created his own genre of fairy painting based on folklore and legends. Among Fitzgerald's influences were the writings of Thomas Crofton Croker and Thomas Keightley that retold the oral and supposedly documentary accounts of, among other subjects, fairy funerals. A popular subject at the time, fairy funerals seem to have occupied the thoughts of not only Croker, Keightly and Fitzgerald, but Blake as well, who purported to have witnessed one in his own backyard (C. Gere, 'In Fairy Land', Victorian Fairy Painting, London, 1997, p. 63).
In The Death of the Fairy Queen, a weightless white-clad fairy floats above her grave on a delicate green leaf while the fanciful figures and creatures surrounding her bow their heads in grief. The painting's vibrant, jewel-like tones are characteristic of Fitzgerald's work and suggestive of an opium-induced state in which colors are intensified and hallucinations abound (Maas, p. 19). The strangeness of Fitzgerald's scenes may also derive from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, which the British artist may likely have seen from prints (Mass, p. 18), and transformed from nightmarish images into charming vignettes of fantastical whimsey. Whether drawing from Bosch, Croker or his own rich imagination, the work of Fairy Fitzgerald formed a playful counter to restrained Victorian society.