Hill Fairies

Hill Fairies, painted in 1883 and now at Towneley Hall Art Gallery, participates in the Victorian revival of fairy painting that stretched from the midcentury Richard Dadd and John Simmons through to Burne-Jones's more Aesthetic treatments of supernatural feminine beings. Burne-Jones's fairies belong to a different tradition from the theatrical miniature fairies of pantomime illustration: they are more closely connected to the Pre-Raphaelite interest in medieval legend, Celtic mythology, and the twilight beings of northern European folklore. The hill setting — connecting the fairy world to ancient landscape features like tumuli, standing stones, or hillforts — grounds the supernatural in a specifically native British geography. By 1883 Burne-Jones was moving into the most prolific and celebrated phase of his career.

Burne-Jones renders his fairies in a continuous, processional or clustered arrangement characteristic of his multi-figure compositions. Their dress tends toward the gossamer, translucent, or draped in the style of ancient Greek robes rather than the insect-winged Victorian fairy convention. The palette employs the pale, luminous tones he associated with supernatural or visionary subjects.