Fairy painting

Despite its whimsical appearance, fairy painting is strongly rooted in the literary and theatrical influences of Romanticism and the cultural issues facing the Victorian era.

[1] Innovations in stage production helped bring these works to the public eye, as the development of gaslight and improvements in wire-work led to increasingly elaborate special effects.

"No other type of painting concentrates so many of the opposing elements of the Victorian psyche: the desire to escape the drear hardships of daily existence; the stirrings of new attitudes toward sex, stifled by religious dogma; a passion for the unseen; the birth of psychoanalysis; the latent revulsion against the exactitude of the new invention of photography.

[9] Despite his status and condition, his fantastic subjects and extraordinarily detailed style were generally well-received, with one period reviewer describing his work as "exquisitely ideal".

Even Edwin Landseer, sometimes named "Victoria's favourite artist", produced a painting of Titania and Bottom in the genre's style, his Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Co-founder John Everett Millais produced a series of fairy paintings based on The Tempest, ending with his 1849 work Ferdinand Lured by Ariel.

The concept design work of Alan Lee and John Howe for The Lord of the Rings (film series)(2001–03), for which the former won an Oscar, would change popular perceptions of the depiction of fairy cultures.