The Victorian Hieronymus Bosch
From our UK edition
No one paints fairyland like Richard Dadd (1817-86). In ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke’, 1855-64, he reveals a teeming congregation of tiny folk, summoned by a dragonfly trumpeter, marshalled by a pompous chamberlain no bigger than a daisy, all gathered in the presence of Merlin (dead centre) to witness a macho fairy break a hazelnut with an axe. The shell will serve, of course, as Queen Mab’s chariot. And yet the scene isn’t cute. By placing the shiny bald pate of a frightened gnome a jot too close to the swing of the axe, the artist suggests the fairy feller might break that nut instead. Dadd is like a Victorian Hieronymus Bosch.
