Is there a weirder modern painting than Richard Dadd’s The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke? There’s the hypnotic swirl of the structure — dotted with daisies — behind a barricade of stems. There’s the preposterous miniaturisation of the fairy world, for the action centres on the cracking of a hazelnut to make a carriage for the fairy Queen Mab. There is the scattering of monstrosities among the little folk — the couple with heads squashed into their necks; the strange old man under the earthen ledge surveying the scene; the even tinier folk in the earth layer above him and the pathetic chap with a white beard staring into the distance like a lunatic, which is apt enough since it was done in an asylum. The peculiar perspective, the hallucinatory detail, the swirling composition make the thing unforgettable.
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July 23, 2026 at 6:17 AM
Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam at the Royal Academy: These hallucinatory wonders are truly, madly brilliant
Evening Standard