[Titania and the Changeling Child - A Midsummer Nights Dream]
pencil, watercolour and bodycolour
11 1/4 by 17 1/2 in
http://www.sothebys.com/app/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?sale_number=L05133&live_lot_id=12
Lot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 30,000 GBP ]
The scene opens upon a wild rose bower in which a group of magical fairy folk are gathered around the garlanded figure of an angelic mortal infant, gathered in the protective arms of Titania, the Queen of the Fairies. The child is the orphaned changeling boy of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream (Act II, Scene I), adopted by Titania after the death of his mother an Indian queen who had been beloved by the queen. He was the cause of the quarrel between Titania and Oberon, the Fairy King who squabbled over possession of the foundling. In Fitzgerald's painting we see the androgynous figure of Oberon crowned with a jewelled headdress and beryl-coloured robes, sweeping into the glade to confront Titania with the words 'Why does Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy, to be my henchman.' Unable to part with such a beautiful companion, she replied 'Set your heart at rest, the fairy land buys not the child for me.' Around them are gathered their ambassadors and hand-maids and the mischievous sprite Puck carries a tendril of jasmine with which to harness the changeling. Perched upon the poisonous foxgloves and amongst the peas blossom and Convolvulus are various piping pixies and goblins, one of which is playing a lyre made from a spider's web. The scene glitters with sparkling dew and fairy light and is coloured in fuchsia and saffron.
The same scene had been interpreted in a more sensual and classical manner by Sir Joseph Noel Paton in his famous picture of 1849 The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, fig.1). It is likely that Fitzgerald knew Paton's picture but his very individual vision of the fairy world conjured up an image which is more magical and supernatural and highly original. The humorous depiction of the tiny musicians is a particular trademark of Fitzgerald's work, derived from the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch and Jan Bruegel the Elder and they can be found in several other works by the artist including The Artist's Dream (private collection) and The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of (two versions, both in private collections).
‘He was a picturesque old chap… He had a mobile face, a twinkling eye, and his hair was long, thick and thrown back from his face… He was known as ‘Fairy Fitzgerald’ from the fact that his work, both colour and black-and-white, was devoted to fairy scenes, in fact his life was one long Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ (Harry Furniss, My Bohemian Days, 1919) John Anster Fitzgerald was an Irishman by birth, the third son of the actor William Thomas Fitzgerald, mocked by Byron in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, thus ‘Let hoarse Fitzgerald bawl; His creaking couplets in a tavern hall’. It is likely that his father’s connections with the theatre led to his interest in fairy subjects through the productions of Shakespeare’s fairy plays. Fitzgerald furthered his interest in such subjects through his illustrations for The Illustrated London News, which often depicted pantomime scenes.
Details of Fitzgerald’s training as a painter are not known and it is likely that he was self-taught. However, by the 1840s he was exhibiting at the British Institution, the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Artists. His oeuvre was not limited to fairy paintings and among the exhibits he showed over his fifty-year career, were landscapes, historical scenes and portraits. However his best-known and most successful work by far, are the series of fairy pictures produced during the 1850s and 1860s. Unlike the other, more conventional subject pictures, his fairy works were highly imaginative, glorious in colour and shimmering with magical poetry. It is these qualities which have made Fitzgerald the most celebrated of all the Victorian fairy painters, more so now than ever before. After his death in 1906, Aaron Wilson of The Savage Club wrote of Fitzgerald, as ‘an artist who will probably be more appreciated in time to come than he is in his own lifetime’ (Christopher Wood, Fairies in Victorian Art, pg. 98).
Titania and the Changeling Child was owned by Elizabeth Reynolds, the great niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Elizabeth was herself a painter and exhibited at the Royal Academy. It is reputed that she met Fitzgerald whilst she was studying under Sir Edwin Landseer's tutelage and that the fairy painter gave her several of his works including the present picture.
Art dealers conned by fake fairy paintings
Art dealers conned by fake fairy paintings
Dalya Alberge Times, 2004
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1048477.ece
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