painting

painting - The Fairy Fellers Master-Stroke

Photograph by duwagison Flickr.

Terry Pratchett s novel, The Wee Free Men, contains a scene inspired by the painting. It was presented to the painting The Fairy Fellers Master-Stroke Tate by the war poet Siegfried Sassoon in memory of his friend and fellow officer Julian Dadd, a great-nephew of painting the artist, and of his two brothers who gave their lives in the First World War. The Queen song The Fairy Feller s Master-Stroke from the band s second album was born of Freddie Mercury s appreciation of the work; it painting Abstract art makes direct reference to the painting s characters as detailed in Dadd s poem.

He was impressed by Dadd s artistic efforts and asked for a fairy painting of his own. However, Dadd himself considered the painting to be unfinished (the background of the lower left corner is only sketched in), and as such added the suffix of Quasi to its title. In order to give context to his work, Dadd subsequently wrote a strange poem by the name of Elimination of a Picture & its subject--called The Fellers Master Stroke in which each of the characters appearing in the picture is given a name and purpose, including myriad references to old English folklore and Shakespeare - apparently trying to show that the painting s unique composition was not merely a product of random, wild inspiration. The painting is in the Tate Britain collection.

The Fairy Fellers Master-Stroke is a Richard Dadd painting. Dadd worked on the painting for nine years - paying microscopic attention to detail, as well as a layering technique producing near-3D results - and it is generally regarded as his most important work.

It was commissioned by George Henry Hayden, who was head steward at Bethlem Royal Hospital at the time. The work is also a central plot element in the novel The Witches of Chiswick by Robert Rankin. .