In 1917, in the village of Cottingley near Bradford, England, two young cousins named Frances and Elsie supposedly captured ‘real’ fairies on their camera. It became a world famous story, supported and defended heavily by one Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

The photographs of the children playing with the fairies in their garden have been seen and loved throughout the world - proof that our fascination for the fairy world has continued into the modern age. Before photography, however, artists attempted to capture the beauty, and often the sinister side, of these fabled creatures.

The obsession with fairies in art was never more pronounced than in the Victorian age. The British artist, John Atkinson Grimshaw, welcomed fairies to his stunning, moonlit Northern-English land and seascapes. Richard Dadd captured a community of fairies in his painting, ‘The Fairy-Feller’s Master Stroke’, which is considered one of the best depictions of the supernatural world. Indeed, fairies have also maintained a major presence in literature, particularly that of Ireland and England’s West Country.

This painting, by Sophie Anderson, is a particularly intimate portrayal of a fairy, complimented by the Pre-Raphaelite style. Complete with butterflies, another Victorian infatuation, the child-like innocence of the creature is detailed in the deep blue of the eyes and the golden locks of hair. Indeed, her ethereal presence is punctuated by the fluid, rippled strokes around her figure. Even in photography and on film, fairies have never been more delicately portrayed than in oil paint.

The Pre-Raphaelite artist Sophie Anderson was born in Paris, France in 1823 but, after fleeing the horrors of the Revolution and moving to England in 1854, she became known as one of Britain’s most popular female artists. Her work is very much of its genre, usually depicting the innocence of young girls or the characters of Romantic literature. In ‘Take the Fair Face of Woman’, Anderson presents the purity of both the young female and the fairy world in a strikingly rich but graceful work of art.