Puck and Fairies, from "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Date:
ca. 1850
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on millboard
Dimensions:
10 3/8 x 12 1/4 inches (26.4 x 31.1 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1975.5.6
Gallery Label:
This small painting is based on a detail of a larger work: The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, which was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1850 and is now at the Scottish National Gallery. Rather than illustrating a specific passage in Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it evokes the “moonlight revels” mentioned by the fairy queen Titania. Despite Paton’s successes, his friend David Octavius Hill, Secretary of the Royal Scottish Academy, suggested he stop painting such subjects for fear that the “asinine multitude” believe “that you can do nothing else, and that you are raving mad.”\n\n Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016
