John George Naish

Christopher Wood, London
Edmund J. McCormick, New York (acquired from the above 1978)
Sale: The McCormick Collection of Victorian Paintings, February 28, 1990, lot 156, illustrated and as cover
Private Collector (and sold: Sotheby's, New York, October 24, 1996, lot 222, illustrated)
Acquired at the above sale

London, British Institution, 1856, no. 306
New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, The Edmund J. and Suzanne McCormick Collection, no. 25
Phoenix Art Museum, English Idylls: The Edmund J. and Suzanne McCormick Collection of Victorian Art, 1988, no. 30
London, Royal Academy of the Arts; Iowa City, The University of Iowa Museum of Art; Toronto, The Art Gallery of Ontario; New York, The Frick Collection, Victorian Fairy Painting, November 13, 1997-January 17, 1999, no. 60 (as Elves and Fairies: A Midsummer Night's Dream)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (on extended loan)

"The British Institution," The Art Journal, no. 18, 1956, p. 84
Beatrice Phillpotts, Fairy Painting, London, 1978, p. 15, pl. 25, illustrated
"Victorian Fairy Painting by Beatrice Phillpotts," Antique Collector, July 1978, p. 80, illustrated
Christopher Forbes, "McCormick's Victorian Reapings:  An American Collection of British Nineteenth Century Pictures," Nineteenth Century, vol. 6, Summer 1980, pp. 40, 45, illustrated
Michelle Marder Kamhi, "Victorian Treasures: Paintings from the McCormick Collection," Aristos, The Journal of Esthetics, vol. 3, no. 4, March 1987, p. 3, 5
Christopher Wood, Fairies in Victorian Art, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2008, p. 124, illustrated p. 125

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This intricate painting on board is in very good condition. The board is stable and the paint layer is clean and varnished. Retouches have been applied in the blue sky in the lower portion of the picture, beneath the butterfly and in and beneath the moon. There are other retouches also in the sky addressing an area of cracks in the leaves in the upper left. In all of the objects of the picture there are a few finely applied retouches in the lower right, diminishing what appears to be a pentiment in the large pale leaf. The paint layer is not abraded and it seems that almost all of the retouches address fine cracks and the odd pentiment which has reemerged. The picture should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Flying across a moonlit sky, a fairy with butterfly wings rides a moth while others frolic in flowers or rest on clouds as diaphanous as their gowns. Such scenes defined Naish's reputation in the 1850s as a painter of fairy and mythological subjects. Art historian Susan P. Casteras believes the image was derived from Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream; the riding figure of the impish Puck and his band of carefree sprites was a frequent source of inspiration for fairy painters. Yet, Naish imbues this subject with very Victorian imagery, notably in the flowers, geraniums and nasturtiums, unfamiliar to the Bard but widely recognized in contemporary gardens. The flowers are painted with intensely vivid, saturated colors contained within darkened lines that define shape and texture. This detail reflects Naish's kinship with John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who prioritized the observation of nature—even in the tweaked, miniature scale of this painting. The work's small size actually allows for an expansive study of the subject, as if the viewer were peering through a microscope to examine the fairies' various costumes and anatomies. This was perfectly suited for the Victorian viewer; many believed in fairies as real-life specimens of minute perfection, and often went on "scientific expeditions" to find the creatures. Fairy paintings reinforced the lore that their ideal bodies were eternal and their home worlds un-changing; this was particularly comforting to those faced with the ever-quickening pace of modern life. Indeed, in appreciating the world of the fairy, the imagined becomes realistic, the supernatural, natural.