Faerie Factoid (1014)

Victorian fairy painter-John Anster Fitzgerald

John Anster Fitzgerald-The Storm Victorian fairy painter John Anster Fitzgerald is one of the most delicate and imaginative of the Victorian Fairy painters. More than any of the other artists working in this genre, he was able to suggest the existence of a coherent alternative world (The Storm, to your left), which was ethereal and bizarre. He exhibited in most of the major London exhibitions from 1845 onwards, showing works at the Royal Academy, the British Institution, the Society of British Artists, the Watercolour Society, and the Dudley Gallery (Nahum).

Like the Victorian era itself, Fitzgerald’s dream paintings are full of internal contradictions. They are both characteristically Victorian and exceptionally modern. Fitzgerald attempts to peek into human mind and soul, thus being extraordinarily ahead of his own time, and yet he draws his goblin-like characters from old folk legends and myths. The techniques in these paintings are diverse and almost mutually exclusive: a thin, almost water-colours quality of paint for the dream characters overlays the deep and intense brushstrokes used for the dreamer himself.

Victorian Fairy Painting-October 14, 1998 through January 17, 1999

The Frick Museum brought together artists represented in the exhibition which are acknowledged masters of fairy painting and included Richard Dadd, John Anster Fitzgerald, Daniel Maclise, and Sir Joseph Noël Paton, but also such surprises as Sir Edwin Landseer, Sir John Everett Millais, and J. M. W. Turner. The works were drawn from private collections, museums, and other institutions throughout England and the United States. The selection of The Storm by John Anster Fitzgerald which introduced this faerie factoid, was representative of the excellence in the Victorian Fairy Painting show.

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