A Child's Dream of Fairy Land by Richard "Dicky" Doyle, 1824-83

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A Child's Dream of Fairy Land

Richard Doyle

c. 1878

Watercolour on paper

Signed with monogram lower left

35.20 cm h x 28.50 cm w (13 3/4 in h x 11 in w)

Provenance Christie's 7 June 1886 under the title A Child's Dream of Fairy Tales, for fifteen guineas; sold to: Michael Williams; by descent to: Private collection; to 2005

Exhibition History Grosvenor Gallery, Winter Exhibition, January 1885, catalogue number 226

See commentary below

Commentary by Peter Nahum

Inscribed on lables on the reverse: 'Michael Williams, bought at Christie's Monday 7th June 1886' and 'The picture was . . . A Child's Dream of Fairyland in the Grosvenor Gallery catalogue, Memorandum by M.W 10th May 1890' and typed on another label 'Richard Doyle 1825-1883 A Child's Dream of Fairytale drawn about AD 1878 and shown at the Winter Exhibition in the Grosvenor Gallery in January 1885. In the Grosvenor Catalogue it was described as A Child's Dream of Fairyland — No. 226 and a cutting of The Standard, Tuesday June 8th 1886 reporting the Christie's sale of the painting.

Described by his friend Holman Hunt as unique and delightful . . . a man overflowing with strange stories, but never with a word of uncharitableness (Wood), Richard 'Dickie' Doyle became the most celebrated of the Victorian fairy painters. Unlike Richard Dadd's haunting fiendish elves and fairies or the sinister pipe-dreams that pervade the work of Fitzgerald, Doyle's fairyland was gentle, harmless and loved by all. He brought fantasy and fairy tales tenderly into children's bedrooms.

Doyle was a master of watercolour as demonstrated in his meticulously painted Grosvenor Gallery exhibit A Child's Dream of Fairy Land. The child sits within his imaginary world crowded with elves, pixies, fairies and sprites.

In 1843 Richard Doyle joined the staff of Punch and designed the magazine's famous cover in 1849. In 1851, after he had left Punch he made some of his first fairyland illustrations for Ruskin's The King of the Golden River. He also illustrated Thackeray's The Newcomes and Leigh Hunt's Pot of Honey and his masterpiece, In Fairy Land, published by Longman Green and Company in 1870, which reveals his secret fairy world at its most enchanting.

Bibliography

Wood, Christopher. Fairies in Victorian Art. 2000.

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Last modified 15 March 2006