Picture a fairy glade secreted in some English meadow somewhere anywhere. Hidden in the undergrowth a fairy scene.
All participants in this ritual dance of stillness are held by a secret magic spell in total thrall. The Fairy Feller is the
only one not affected by the narcoleptic state. The moment has come whereby he will strike with his hammer a
Magic nut laid on the ground. At that very moment when the nut is cracked the spell is broken, and the arrested
moment released. At once everything locked within the scene, humans and fairy's, furry creatures and insects and
reality itself, are awakened from their magic thrall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fairy_ ... ter-Stroke
The painting of the scene bu Richard Dadd,note that the back to front calves on the females. Richard Dadd had an
intersting, though tragic history.
The Queen pop group, made a song about the woodcutter striking the enchanted nut.
"We'll now advance these folks displayed as in a trance.."
Dadd was diagnosed with what is known as bipolar manic depression, an ailment which has affected a great number
of famous people over the centuries. In the asylum, the doctors encouraged him to continue painting, which he
certainly did, but Richard Dadd had entered a new era in his painting career. It was here that he executed such
masterworks as Fairy Feller's Master Stroke and Contradiction, Oberon and Titania. Fairy Feller, or more properly, by its full title -The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke.
Painted for G.H.Hayden, Esqe by RD.Dadd/quasi 1855-1864, is a painting of only 39.4cm, and arguably one of
England's master works. Dadd referred to it as "quasi", because in his estimation, it was unfinished, though he spent
nine years painting it.
There is no possible way that Fairy-Feller can be properly reproduced in any medium,it is literally three dimensional,
so thick are the layers of paint that Dadd painstakingly applied. Using a magnifying glass. Dadd worked in minute,
obsessive detail, even the original painting, which is in London, a part of the Tate Gallery collection, needs to be
displayed with "raking light" in order to be properly appreciated.
When Dadd finally stopped work on the painting, he immediately reproduced it in watercolour, and wrote a bizarre
verse guidebook for it entitled Elimination of a picture and its subject - called The Feller Master. Stroke. The guide
starts with "We'll now advance these folks displayed as in a trance..." and goes on to assign each of the hundreds of even minor characters a separate task......
More info on link here:
http://www.973-eht-namuh-973.com/Alchem ... 20909.html
Richard Dadd was born August 1, 1817 in Chatham, Kent, England. At the age of 13 the family moved to London, and
in 1837, Dadd age 20, was admitted to the Royal Academy of Art and gathered a number of painterly friends, known
as collectively as 'The Clique'. He won several awards while in the Academy, and began exhibiting his work during his
first year.
Dadd was judged insane after he murdered his father in 1843, and was committed to Bethlem Hispital. When Dr.
William Hood came to the hospital as its administrator in 1852, he saw Dadd could profitably fill his time with
painting and gave him the supplies he needed. The fairy Feller's Master-Stroke occupied the artist for nine years, but the strange work has yet to be fully interpreted and explained.
Dadd stayed in Bedlam for almost 20 years, later transferred to another asylum called Broadmoor, where he remained
for the rest of his life, dying at the age of 69 from "acute lung disease."
What the painting means is obscure, but the content of the picture is made somewhat comprehensible by a poem Dadd
wrote to describe the various figures and activities depicted, we know from this poem, Elimination of a picture & its
subject-called The Feller's Master Stroke, that everything in the painting is intentional and that is not simply a
pastiche of mad delusions.
At the centre of the painting is a figure Dadd calls "The Patriarch." He has a full white beard and wears an improbably huge hat with a papa - like, three-tiered crown. Fairies and elves dance on the brim of the hat, which twists off
Into tendrils and flowers to join the vegetation surrounding the Patriarch. The Feller, directly beneath the Patriarch
stands his axe poised, awaiting the command to split a hazelnut in two.
the fat woodman holds aloft the axe
Whose-double edge virtue now they tax
To so it singly &I make single double
Featly & nearly-equal without trouble.
REALEASED FROM THRALL FROM THRALL RELEASED