John George Naish 1824-1905

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, The Stone Gallery;
Private Collection

A similar picture by Naish entitled Moon Fairies II and dated 1853 is reproduced in Christopher Wood's study of Victorian fairy painters (Fairies in Victorian Art, 2000, p. 126). He also painted a naked fairy riding a moth in his masterpiece Elves and Fairies, A Midsummer Night's Dream of 1856. The present work was probably painted by Naish in the 1850s before he moved to Ifracombe in Devon and lost his fascination with the fairy world and became a rather conventional landscape painter.